Best ever PKU low protein pancakes

As you all know I’ve been taking a bit of a break from blogging until we’re in a living situation that allows me to get back into the kitchen and cook on a more frequent basis. We move next week and I’m really looking forward to it – a kitchen will a full sized fridge, a splashback instead of the bare plasterboard wall we’ve got now and on the same level as the rest of the house which will make looking after my daughter and cooking at the same time much easier!

Still, sometimes no matter how much you want to avoid it (in my case for fear of ruining said bare plasterboard wall… my mother in law would kill me!) you have no choice but to cook. And as they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

Well, this morning I spent most of my time procrastinating… about my breakfast! You see, I wasn’t particularly well organised in my shopping this week and I didn’t plan my meals particularly well so here I am on friday morning, hanging out for my husband’s pay day on Monday, and with excrutiatingly little in the fridge and cupboards except for low protein products, various out of date things (oops!) and a few odds and ends that don’t exactly equal a meal. Don’t get me wrong, it was actually quite productive! During my procrastination I managed to feed, bath and play with the baby, put her down for a nap, make myself a low protein latte while I delighted in the gentle hum, hissing of steam  and delicious coffee smell coming from my home espresso machine, clean the kitchen and bathroom and put on a load of washing. Eventually though, it was inevitable that I was not going to be able to ignore my hunger any longer.

I knew I was going to have to get creative if I wanted a meal that was going to fill me up and not blow my morning’s phe budget. I have been avoiding doing too much low protein cooking (or any cooking for that matter) but I decided to summon up everything I had to make myself a batch of pancakes from an unknown recipe.

Here is the final product:

I’ve got to say, I’m pretty pleased with them. Now, they’re NOT phe free. I attribute that as to why they’re so good. The good thing is though, you don’t need to eat the whole recipe. My next experiment is going to be making this recipe oil free.

Kate’s PKU Pancakes (based on a recipe from Fate Special Foods)
200g fate baking mix (you can try any other baking mix you have but I can’t guarantee results)
1 tsp baking powder
450ml water
50ml oil
A good splash of vanilla extract (I didn’t measure but I used a lot)
Pinch salt
1 – 2 tablespoons sugar (I used Demerara sugar)
1 medium egg (6g protein/6 50mg exchanges)

Method
Place all ingredients in a large bowl and mix with a hand mixer until well combined. The batter should be quite thick. Heat a frying pan at a touch over medium heat and put in one or two squirts of low calorie spray (don’t use pouring oil or butter – it will make the pancakes overly greasy, gummy and not very nice).

Spoon the mixture into the frying pan and tilt the frying pan in circles (let me know if you want me to put up a video of what I mean by this) to get the mixture to spread out a bit but there’s no need to do anything else to it. You will need to flip the pancakes when lots of bubbles appear on the surface but BEFORE they burst. It takes a few goes but you’ll get the hang of getting the perfect colour soon!

To find the grams/exchanges per pancake simply divide 6 by the number of pankcakes or pikelets you make. I used a large soup ladle to put the mix into the frying pan and I made 12 pancakes plus a small pikelet.