A few years ago I discovered rice flour pancakes. I find them to be much lighter than flour pancakes and easier to digest. I do not have a gluten allergy, at least not that I know of, but never really enjoyed the heaviness of wheat flour in pancakes. Plus I find that wheat flour pancakes never seem to cook right. Maybe that is because I just haven't found the right recipe.
Don't be scared by the fact that this recipe contains rice, it's nothing like rice pudding, or potato pancakes. Rice flour is easy to find in your local health food store. You might be able to find it in the bin section if your grocery has one of those. Otherwise you grocery should have a section where non-wheat flours can be found. You may have the choice between brown rice flour and white rice flour. I choose to go with brown rice flour, but honestly either would work well.
The first time I made this recipe, years ago I used white rice flour and made the pancakes plain. This time I wanted to spruce it up a bit and decided to add lavender, orange zest, and used coconut oil instead of canola. Keep in mind that the addition of these three things will definitely give your pancake a specific flavor. The coconut oil definitely compliments the orange zest and lavender, but this isn't your Mom's pancake recipe.
A side note about coconut oil, we have recently started using coconut oil in various recipes and have found it to be quite amazing. But obviously it tastes like coconut. If you think you don't like coconut, coconut oil just might change your mind. It's amazing folks!
So here we go...my first recipe.
Rice Flour Pancake
1 cup rice flour
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg beaten
1 cup milk *
2 tsp oil **
Mix together dry ingredients. Add milk and mix until smooth, the mixture will be quite thick. Add beaten egg and oil and mix until just blended. You might need to add another tsp to tbsp of milk at this point depending on consistency.
As stated earlier I also added about a tsp of lavender flowers and a tsp of orange zest to the dry mix. You can use your grater to grate the zest off of the orange rind, there is a special tool for this called a microplane, but I find the fine grater on my box grater works well.
*-Any type of milk can be used in this recipe cow, soy, rice, almond, hemp, or coconut. I prefer So Delicious unsweetened coconut milk, as you can put it in coffee with no coagulation like rice, and you can actually cook with it-consider bechamel sauce. Coconut milk also has a great texture, actually very similar to cow milk without the smell and any nasty side effects from lactose. Coconut milk does not taste like coconut.
**-You can use a variety of oil for this recipe but I would suggest canola or corn if you do not want the oil to effect the flavor of the pancake. Olive oil is going to make your pancake taste like olive oil. Coconut oil is going to make your pancake taste like coconut.
