Swedish Pancake Cake

Swedish_pancake_cake

I started counting how many pancake recipes we have posted since we started the blog and it’s surprisingly few. At least if you divide that number with the number of times we have made pancakes since we started the blog, which is embarrassingly many. We like pancakes in our family and I think we need to blog more about it. We have pancakes for breakfast, lunch or dinner at least once a week.

So with a few hours left on Shrove Tuesday aka Pancake Tuesday, we wanted to throw in a little collection with some of our favourite pancake recipes from the past years – both sweet and savoury. We are also sharing the ultimate way to eat pancakes, in the form of a cake! If not for tonight, it’s an unbeatable breakfast (or dessert) for your loved ones on Valentine’s Day. The recipe is from our first book, The Green Kitchen, which btw is coming out on Portuguese this Spring (the 11th language it is being translated to, crazy!).

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We love American style pancakes that are stacked up high and topped with a drizzle of syrup and fruit. These Flour-free Banana, Blueberry & Coconut Pancakes are made simply with egg, banana, blueberries and desiccated coconut and they are much lighter than common American pancakes. The recipe is from The Green Kitchen but can also be found on Cooked.com. All our book recipes are actually available on the Cooked website, it’s a subscription based site but they have a 30-day free trial.

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Spinach Crepes with Chickpea, Apple & Tahini Filling. We have been making green pancakes for years and it’s simply achieved by mixing pancake batter in a blender with the addition of spinach (or beetroot). We serve these with a savoury filling for dinner but they also taste great on their own. Click here for the full recipe. And here is a video with us making them.

gks_masala_dosa

Masala Dosa filled with Sweet Potato & Peas, Mango & Raisin Chutney and Raita. We loved eating dosa for breakfast in India and all the different fillings add so much flavour with both sweet and savoury tones. The dosa batter is made without eggs so these are perfect for vegans. This recipe is from Green Kitchen Travels and is available on Cooked.com.

gks_vegan_quinoa_oat_pancakes

Coconut & Quinoa Pancakes with Clementine Marmalade. These vegan pancakes are from Amy Chaplin’s brilliant book that we blogged about last year. Here is the recipe.

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Buckwheat crêpes with passion and mango syrup. Our version of French dessert crêpes are topped with an addictive Mango & Passionfruit Syrup and a dollop of mascarpone. The recipe is from Green Kitchen Travels and can also be found on Cooked.com.

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Summer Berry Pancake Cake

I have made different versions of this cake since I was a child, and I never get tired of it. I think it is so beautiful with all those stacks of pancakes, and the berries and cream squishing out from the sides. Traditionally you put jam between the layers, but we stick to fresh fruit, nut butter and date syrup. The pancakes should be very thin, so we always use a non-stick frying pan when we make these. You can prepare the pancakes one day in advance and assemble the cake just before serving. If fresh berries aren’t in season, you can use frozen instead./David

Pancake Batter
200 g buckwheat flour
3 large eggs (or 4 medium)
500 ml / 2 cups soy milk or milk of your choice
1 tbsp butter, plus extra for frying
pinch sea salt

Layers
3 ripe bananas, sliced thin
225 g / 1 1/2 cup raspberries, mashed with a fork
225 g / 1 1/2 cup blackberries, mashed with a fork
125 g nut butter
120 ml raw date syrup (soft dates mixed with a splash of water in a blender)
500 ml / 2 cups thick cream, chilled

Topping
150 g / 1 cup raspberries
125 g / 1 cup blackberries
2 tbsp pistachio nuts, chopped

To make the batter, add all the ingredients, plus 250 ml / 1 cup  water to a large mixing bowl and whisk vigorously until you have a smooth batter. Make sure that there are no lumps of flour left. Refrigerate for 20 minutes. Give it a good whisk after you have removed it from the fridge, as the flour tends to sink to the bottom.
Heat a 20 cm / 8, preferably non-stick, frying pan on medium-high heat. When the pan is hot, add a few drops of oil and about 75 ml of the batter. Tilt the pan until the batter is evenly distributed. Fry for 45–60 seconds on each side, until the pancakes are golden and can be flipped easily with a spatula. Fry all of the pancakes – the batter should make about 15 – and place on baking paper to cool off. You can layer with baking paper between the pancakes to stop them sticking together.
To assemble, pour the cold cream into a large chilled bowl. Use an electric hand mixer or a whisk to whip it until soft peaks form. Set aside. Put the cold first pancake on a cake stand. Spread a layer of thin slices of banana evenly over the top. Add another pancake and top it with about a third of the mashed raspberries. Then continue with next pancake and a third of the mashed blackberries. Continue with another pancake and carefully spread a thin layer of nut butter and date syrup on it. Add another pancake and spread with a layer of whipped cream.
Then start all over with the banana layer. Continue until all the pancakes are covered. Top with whipped cream, fresh fruit and finely chopped pistachios.

All photos from our first book by Johanna Frenkel.

Green Kitchen Stories

Chickpea & Sweet Potato Noodle Soup

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It’s pretty clear how I’m handling winter this year: lots of big, bold, spicy food. Chili, saffron, ginger, and paprika are on heavy rotation these days, and I’m surviving cold days with hot meals infused with far-away flavours.

The inspiration for this dish came from harira, a spicy Moroccan and Algerian soup that is traditionally eaten during Ramadan. I made it a lot when I first went vegetarian, about 16 years ago, but after adding several more recipes to my repertoire, kind of forgot about it. In the interest of internally thawing out my bod, I thought I would dust off this old favourite and give it a couple updates.

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You’ll often see a lot of harira recipes calling for rice or pasta, but I wanted to go the grain-free route on this one, so I pulled out my trusty spiralizer and make noodles out of sweet potatoes! As much as I love “raw noodles” like spiralized zucchini and beet and carrot, let’s face it: beyond their appearance, they aren’t fooling anyone into believing they are pasta. But something really amazing happens when you cook vegetable noodles just a little bit – they actually become rather tender, yielding, and able to absorb other flavours. Sweet potato noodles are definitely a favourite of mine, especially in cooked dishes like this one. They add great texture, and of course, noodle-free oodles of nutrients (try saying that five times).

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You don’t have to soak the lentils for this dish, but it will cook faster it you do, plus the lentils themselves will be far more digestible. And of course you can use canned chickpeas instead of cooking them from dried, but because you won’t be blending them up (into hummus, for instance) I promise it’s worth the effort for not-totally-mushy results. If you’ve never tried cooking your own chickpeas from scratch, maybe now is the time to take the plunge! You’ll never go back, I promise. 

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In other news, I’ve added two new recipes to the My New Roots App! If you’re craving a little more in the way of raw, juicy sunshine, here are two brand-new and exclusive smoothie bowls for your pleasure: the Zippy Zucchini Smoothie Bowl and the Plum Dandy Smoothie Bowl. If you have the app already simply update it, and if you don’t, you can download it here.

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And this week I’m in Sri Lanka, all thanks to Cinnamon Hotels for kidnapping me from the icy cold and transporting to me to a tropical paradise full of exotic fruits, cerulean 29° ocean water, and annoyingly perfect palm-tree-sunset-white-sand-beach situations. If you don’t want to be jealous, you should probably avoid my Instagram, okay?

Stay cozy out there!
xo, Sarah B

The post Chickpea & Sweet Potato Noodle Soup appeared first on My New Roots.


My New Roots

Curried Chickpea Salad Lettuce Wraps

Curried Chickpea Salad Lettuce Wraps

One of the best things to do when cooking is plan. Planning can help solve the “what’s for dinner” question and also prepare you for the next day. When I worked in an office, I found lunch to be the hardest part to plan. I’d think about it in the evenings and tell myself I’d get it in the morning. That never happened and inevitably I’d be grabbing something kind of junky out of desperation.

February is dedicated to sharing recipes that can easily be made while making dinner. Each recipe I share will have a corresponding dinner recipe that shares ingredients (making it easier to throw together.) For this particular curried chickpea salad, I usually make it while I’m making this chickpea curry with cauliflower. The homemade curry powder takes everything up a notch and the only extra prep is chopping the chickpeas/scallions!

This is the fourth (maybe fifth) chickpea salad I’ve shared on the site and with good reason. It’s fast to make, can be adapted to any taste, and may be the perfect vegetarian lunch. This curried chickpea version is my new favorite (then again, I love anything with curry.) Make up a big batch and eat it for a few days throughout the week. Pack this salad on a road trip or tuck it away in your carry on for a snack mid-flight-it’s great for so many meals/snacks. Read more and see the recipe.

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