fluffy healthy banana pancakes.

Hello dear readers, it's been a while, if 10 days constitutes as a while. I'm sorry for the absence - life has been really busy of late and baking has become a luxury, a rare precious activity when I have the time and energy to potter about the kitchen, as well as muster up the courage to face the towering pile of dirty baking utensils to be cleaned afterwards.

So after the longest of time, I finally found a pocket of time to pick up that wooden spoon and wipe the dust of my mixing bowl. Pockets of time actually - more baking to follow in the next few days hurrah! For today, I decided to make pancakes and leave the heavy duty baking to tomorrow, a bit of adjusting back to the lifestyle of a baker if you will.

Perhaps it's the influence of all those mouth watering but surprisingly healthy pancake stacks on Instagram I've been checking out lately that I felt compelled to try out the much talked about two ingredient banana pancake recipe, which basically just has eggs and bananas. As usual, I never just jump into a recipe headfirst; I always make sure to read reviews of the recipe before making it myself so that I can tweak it to suit my taste better. What I gathered about the basic banana pancake recipe were that the pancakes taste rather eggy and also turn out rather thin and flat. I also saw variations of the original recipe, some in addition to the primary two ingredients, cinnamon and vanilla to counteract the egginess, and some with baking powder to make them thicker.

I took the advice of the bloggers who added leavening but I didn't use any flavorings because I had another plan in mind to mute the potentially eggy taste as well as increase the height of the pancakes - beaten egg whites. Out of the two eggs that are called for per banana, I separated one of them and whipped the whites to stiff peaks before folding it back into the batter.

The results were extremely soft and fluffy pancakes that were also moist and squishy within. The banana dominates these pancakes, with hardly any egginess whatsoever. However, they were frustratingly fragile. I think only half of my pancakes managed to stay intact as I attempted to flip them over, all the while cursing my lack of a better spatula. I think this is the trade off for fluffier pancakes, but I shall try again with an additional unbeaten egg white.

I took this opportunity to make a pancake stack of my own, as you can see. The order from bottom up is as follows: pancake x2, homemade maple brown sugar almond butter and banana slices, pancake, reese's peanut butter and banana slices, pancake, chocolate peanut butter, pancake, almond butter, mangled pancakes and finally, more chocolate peanut butter, almond butter and a decorative banana round. Utter decadence.

It probably looks like a lot but it's actually quite easy to polish off. The biggest problem is figuring out how to eat the pancakes without the entire tower toppling; a problem that I couldn't solve, and will attempt to conquer soon. Here's to more pancake stacks.

Fluffy Healthy Banana Pancakes
serves 1

1 banana, mashed (you should get about 1/3 cup's worth)
1 large egg
1 large egg white, beaten to stiff peaks
1/4 tsp baking powder

Whisk the banana and egg together, making sure you get the batter as smooth as possible. Stir in the baking powder. Fold in the beaten egg whites. Cook the pancakes as you usually do - be careful when you flip them.