Gluten-Free Quinoa Pancakes

I’ve been experimenting with more gluten-free recipes lately due to some crazy inflammation in my finger joints. Seems like we hardly eat anything to eliminate with an elimination diet to determine the cause, but we do eat some gluten, although very little. I’m giving eliminating it entirely a shot – it’s not difficult to do given that we only eat bread out and I prefer brown rice pasta and tortillas anyway.

These pancakes were great and incredibly light! We each ate a large stack and I didn’t get feel heavy and stuffed as I would’ve if they had been wheat or buckwheat. I made them with Enjoy Life dairy, nut, soy, and gluten-free chocolate chips but I think blueberries would be better. A certain toddler ate our entire blueberry purchase before we’d even left the store, however, so we had to make do with what was on hand.

Gluten-Free Quinoa Pancakes

• 2 cups quinoa flour (see below)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda (or you can just do 2 tsp baking powder)
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 3/4 – 2 cups non-dairy milk
• 2 Tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• flax meal replacement for 2 eggs (follow link and see below)
• blueberries, chocolate chips, or any other berries or nuts you like in pancakes

You can grind quinoa into quinoa flour in a blender and flax seeds into flax meal in a coffee grinder – it’s a lot more likely you’ll have quinoa on hand than quinoa flour, after all! That’s what I did for this recipe.

Mix all the dry ingredients together before adding liquid ingredients. Start with the lesser amount of non-dairy milk and add more as necessary – the batter will be thick and you will need to spread it around in the pan a bit, sort of a porridge consistency. Add remaining liquid ingredients and mix gently. Add blueberries or chocolate chips and mix in. I like to let pancake batter rest a bit before cooking – this is useful for gluten-based pancakes and I have no idea if it serves any purpose here, but why not take a break? Gave me time to feed the dogs.

Dole out your batter in 1/4 inch servings and spread gently into circles. Cook until the edges are a bit browned and/or little bubbles form, flip and cook another minute or two. I keep mine warm in the oven on a baking pan at around 190 degrees until serving. These were great topped with fruit preserves!

Stay tuned for my even BETTER recipe for gluten-free peanut butter and jelly muffins!!!