Gluten free, Dairy free, Eggless Pancakes with Strawberry Syrup

This is not by choice. My husband has recently moved to a gluten free diet. Also quit dairy and eggs. He is doing great with these restrictions. But this has challenged my cooking, specially breakfast.

I didn't have much knowledge about gluten free diet until recently. Well, in short, you can't have oats, cereal, granola, pancakes, cookies or anything for that matter unless it is specially made gluten free.

For now, we are buying gluten free cookies and cereal. We were also buying gluten free pancakes mixes. They don't taste quite like pancakes nor do they look like one. They look brownish rather than yellowish!

Now in a family of two (me and my husband), I am not making two different breakfasts, hence I started eating gluten free pancakes too. Dissatisfied by a few of the gluten free pancakes mixes available at the store, I started looking up recipes online and perfecting them over time. Here are the things I learned:

Flour: If you plan to buy all purpose flour mix, King Arthur has a nice gluten free all-purpose flour. However, if you want to make your own mix, some of the great gluten free blogs such as Gluten-free goddess, gluten free on a shoe string, gluten free girl are great places to get ideas.

Dairy free milk: Rice milk and almond milk are great options. However note that rice milk is thin (quite like skimmed milk) while almond milk is thicker (quite like full fat milk) in consistency. So, you might need to adjust recipe accordingly.

We were kind of getting tired of having maple syrup with pancakes every morning. 

The other day, my grocery store had the most beautiful looking strawberries. Also, I love strawberries! Made a very simple syrup with strawberries. Loved them on our pancakes. In fact, it was so good, I had a few spoonfuls of syrup right out of the jar. Shhh!

You need (Makes 8 pancakes):

For pancakes:

1 cup of  GF all-purpose flour (I used King Arthur's)

2 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoon maple syrup (You can use sugar or honey- note that the sweetness will differ)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

¼ cup unsweetened apple sauce (I used Mott's natural apple sauce. You can definitely use sweetened and flavored apple sauce, just note to adjust sweetness)

¾ dairy free milk (I used unsweetened almond milk here. I also use rice milk at times. Use as much as needed for the mix to come to the right consistency.)

For strawberry simple syrup:

1 lb strawberries, hulled, chopped

⅓ cup granulated sugar

⅓ water

pinch of salt

Method:

For pancakes:

Add all the ingredients in a bowl except milk and mix (I don't bother to separate dry and wet ingredients). Add the milk and whisk until there are no lumps. I first added ½ cup milk, and then slowly added ¼ cup milk to reach the right consistency (not too thick, not too runny, somewhere in the middle is the right consistency.)

Put a griddle or pan on your stovetop on medium heat. Add ¼ cup of the batter for each pancake.

Cook for a few minutes until you see bubbles in the middle of the pancake, takes a minute or two. Flip the pancake and cook the other side for about 30 seconds.

Serve with fresh fruits and homemade strawberry syrup.

For syrup:

Prepare the strawberries. Add the strawberries, sugar, water and salt in a small sauce pan on medium heat. 

Simmer for 15 min or until the sugar is dissolved and the berries become soft.

Transfer to a blender and blend to a smooth syrup. Chill before serving.