John’s Pecan Blueberry Oatmeal Pancakes

This recipe for Pecan Blueberry Oatmeal pancakes has everything you love in a pancake but is packed with healthy nuts, fruit, fiber and oats. It started as my husband John’s attempt to create a healthier pancake that still tasted great.  He is a fitness nut and wants to stay in shape but he enjoys a stack of pancakes on the weekend.   One of the best ways to make pancakes a little bit less of a guilty pleasure is to include three things that you really can enjoy more of — berries, nuts and oatmeal.   You can also use a little bit of pure maple syurp (contains antioxidants) and these will be a weekend treat that is also a pretty healthy breakfast choice.

The basic ingredient is still a “complete” pancake mix.  He uses Fiber One™ Complete Pancake Mix. It has great taste and texture and adds some extra fiber to the recipe. You can expand this recipe to any size by just making the basic pancake mix (complete mix and water) per the recipe.   The trick is to adjust the consistency of the batter so that it behaves like normal pancake mix even after you’ve added all of the extra goodies in this recipe.

So John likes plain oatmeal as a really healthy alternative to sugary cereals and he wanted to add some of that in place of the pancake mix in regular pancakes.   Most of the batter in a “complete” pancake mix is just white flour so adding oatmeal is a big step toward improving that.   But putting dry quick oats into a pancake mix leaves you with a little bit of sawdust in your mouth because even quick oats can’t really cook in the middle of a pancake on a griddle.

After some experimenting, we found that just pre-cooking the oats for 30 seconds before putting them into the batter makes them mix and cook perfectly once on the griddle.   Adding in some crushed pecans (or nuts you like) and blueberries creates a pancake with texture and flavor like you won’t believe.  I have a feeling we’ll be serving these at Sugar’s Bed & Breakfast someday to great acclaim. 🙂

Ingredients (makes 8-10 medium pancakes):

• 1 cup Fiber One™ Complete Pancake Mix
• 3/4 cup of water for pancake mix
• 1/4 cup of quick oatmeal (1-minute type)
• 1/2 cup of water for oatmeal
• Splash of milk
• 1/2 cup crushed pecans
• 1 cup of blueberries

Directions:

Heat up your pancake griddle.   I like to spray mine with non-stick spray thoroughly and then wipe off the excess with a paper towel.  This results in a stick free surface that you don’t have to respray as long as it stays hot.   Your griddle will be hot enough when a few drops of water tossed on the griddle ball up and dance on the surface.

Combine oats with 1/2 cup water and microwave in a small bowl for 30 seconds.  Then, add a splash of milk to cool.  Stir and set aside.

Combine in large mixing bowl the complete pancake mix and water per directions on box.  Pour in oatmeal mixture and mix together with the pancake mix.  Add nuts and mix well.   At this point, before you add the blueberries, test the consistency.   It may be a little too watery because of the oatmeal mixture and you don’t want the batter to be too thin.   Because of the size of the blueberries, you want your batter to be thick enough so that the blueberries won’t bulge out both sides when cooking.  That just results in burnt berries and uncooked pancakes.   To thicken up your batter, just add more complete mix and whisk it up.   Then, when it’s perfect, add your blueberries.

Pour a big spoonful of batter onto the center of your griddle and cook just one pancake to make sure the griddle is hot enough and not too hot.

In about a minute or less, you should see drying and bubbles of the batter around the edge of the pancake and you can flip it.  If the other side is golden brown, you’re golden.

Let that one cook on the other side for a minute and remove.   Put another 3 or 4 spoonfuls on the griddle and repeat.

We like to add a big pad of butter to each of the pancakes and top them with warm real vermont maple syrup but they’re good without butter too and even with off the shelf syrup.   Sometimes, we’ll serve them up with butter, syrup and a sprinkle of confectioner’s sugar.   John usually does this for me on a morning when he gives me a break from cooking.  They don’t need any additional flavor but he likes to make them look fancy for me.  He’s so cute!  Enjoy these 🙂