Power Pancakes

My dear husband goes to work very early in the morning, and doesn't like to get up earlier still to fuss over cooking or eating breakfast. Nowadays I like to have some of these pancakes ready for him to easily heat and eat.

I found the original on a Zone Diet e-mail discussion list quite a while ago. A woman named Karen created and collected recipes that followed the principles of balancing protein, carbohydrates and fat at each meal or snack, and published them in a notebook called Karen's Kitchen. Her original recipe doesn't seem to be available online anymore.

I have adapted it and increased the quantities; I usually also double the recipe below, and freeze most of the results. I can never seem to make these pancakes come out very neat and uniform. The front of my griddle is too hot, the back is too cool, and the cakes want to get very brown from all the cheese in them. In this picture I had just put a little more butter on the griddle when I decided to take the picture; that is the butter pooling on my warped cast aluminum griddle on my not-level stove. Another thing that is not neat is my stovetop, as I somehow get little brown bits of pancake all over the place. I tried to crop them off so you wouldn't see what a sloppy cook I am.

After years of making these, it only last night occurred to me to add some baking powder, to lighten them up. Karen's recipe used only the whites of the eggs, and I'm sure the whole-egg version is heavier. As I made them successfully without baking powder for a long time, I put it down as optional, though I think it did help them to cook a little faster. I'm not sure if they were lighter in the end.

When I am frying these up, I find it really hard not to overindulge in testing and sampling them, I like them myself so much.

Power Pancakes

2 cups oat flour (this can be made by whirling uncooked oats in the blender.)
8 eggs or 16 egg whites
16 oz. lowfat cottage cheese
3 tablespoons sugar
4 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 tablespoon baking powder (optional)

Blend all ingredients except the oat flour in two or three batches in your blender or food processor; beat in flour until moistened. Cook on a greased griddle at a temperature a little lower than regular pancakes. They will be very brown.

When they are cool, I wrap them in waxed-paper packages of three pancakes, and freeze in a big ziplock bag. At night before bed, I set one package on the kitchen counter to defrost, and my husband heats them in the microwave in the morning and tops them with a little applesauce for a meal with serious staying-power.