Blender Pancakes

Well, this morning, I made pancakes with my old standby recipe, Easy Pancakes. I usually add 1/4 C chocolate chips. Except, dah dah dah duuuuuuuuh! I made them in the blender this morning!!! Woo, can you stand it?

I thought they turned out well, no, I didn't add the chips, silly, I put those in AFTER I blended everything else.

This recipe has you mix, then wait (5-10! minutes), then mix and wait again (another 10m or so!). Well, let me tell you, we do not have that kind of time, it takes long enough just to do three at a time in the skillet for 2m or so on one side and 1m or so flipped; that's 12 pancakes, 3 at a time, multiplied by 3m each... so using the blender and not waiting was juuuuuuust fine.

I guess you can make nice whole wheat pancakes in the blender, apparently that is what most blender pancake recipes are as that's what came up when I googled it. Oh, and while you're at that Blendtec site, check out the "Will it blend?" videos, if you haven't already. I particularly like this one.

















Easy (Blender or not) Pancakes

2 1/2 C AP flour
2 T sugar
2 T baking powder
1 t salt
1/2 t cinnamon
2 1/2 C soymilk
1 T veg oil
1/4 C chocolate chips

Dry, then wet. Or just dump everything in the blender and mix, stopping to scrape sides with rubber spatula (I never know what to call those things, scraper? spatula?).
Do not overmix or they will be rubbery.
Cook on med high (I start at 6, then 4 then 3 as the skillet get hotter).

One time I reserved 1/4 C of the batter and added 1/4 C applesauce and 2 t cinnamon and then used it to pour swirl patterns into the freshly poured pancake. Fancy.

Lentil Walnut Dip

This afternoon we were having soup and I got ambitious and made Lentil Walnut Dip. It was really good! I toasted the walnuts in my good 'ol cast iron pan (watch them like a hawk!) and added water slowly to the blender to keep everything going. I just threw stuff in a little at a time until it was aaaaallll gone. And I didn't use any lemon juice. It kind of freaked out my blender a few times when there was an air pocket- it's thick stuff!

1 C french lentils, uncooked
1 C walnuts, toasted
1 clove garlic
1 T olive oil
1 t salt
1 C water

Blend everything together, adding lentils, then walnuts, then garlic, then lentils, then walnuts then water as needed until it all blends together.
I imagine you could use canned lentils, too, if you were in an allfired hurry (although they'd be brown lentils, then. Maybe it would change the texture too much).

Esme's sauce

Esme's Special Sauce