Fluffy Chocolate Chip Pancakes - Recipe

It's Shrove Tuesday! The best Tuesday of the entire year of course. If you're a long time blog follower of mine then you'll know how much I flipping love pancakes! They are the only breakfast I'd queue up for in the pouring rain outside The Breakfast Club for (this has happened more times than I'd like to admit). 

My chosen texture is fluffy American pancakes and there is only one recipe you need for the best homemade fluffy pancakes, it's my failsafe and I can (almost) do it with my eyes shut - this BBC recipe. They are fab plain with a little maple syrup or you can add in whatever you fancy. I've made them with blueberries, diced apple, mashed banana and on the occasion chocolate chunks. With the extras it's really up to you how much or little you add in. For these I added about 70g of chocolate chunks to the pancake batter and cooked them as normal. 

135g/4¾oz plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

2 tbsp caster sugar

130ml/4½fl oz milk

1 large egg, lightly beaten

2 tbsp melted butter (allowed to cool slightly) or olive oil, plus extra for cooking

70g of chocolate chunks or chips (which ever type of chocolate you fancy)

Simply sift your dry ingredients into a bowl and mix together. Melt your butter and allow to cool then mix in your milk and then beat in your egg. Bit by bit pour your wet ingredients into your dry ingredients. Don't whisk or beat, fold the mixture as you don't want it to lose the fluffiness. Then pour in any extras you want (like you chocolate chunks). Fry in a non-stick pan on a medium heat. THe trick to know when to turn it over is when the texture on the top starts to bubble.

Enjoy! 

Chocolate Banana Smoothie

Sometimes there’s nothing you want more than a shot of sugar right to the soul. But sometimes you also try to hold back from ramming everything sweet down your neck - so when I’m trying to be good I make this sweet saviour.

Ok, let me preface this by saying THIS IS NOT “HEALTHY”, it’s just not as fatty as eating a bar of chocolate and just as delicious in my opinion. The best bit about this is that it’s super simple to make… four ingredients, one blender, BOOM.

You’ll need

1 ripe banana

½ tablespoon vanilla ice cream (you can sub this out if you want it to be less calorific)

1 cup of milk (can use soy, almond, hazelnut etc)

½ tablespoon cacao powder

Bung all of these ingredients in your blender and whizz until smooth.

Enjoy!

Honestly, you definitely have time for breakfast

I wake up at 5:30 every weekday and I always eat breakfast. In fact last week I was so knackered I decided to skip breakfast and have a bit more time in bed. But because my brain was awake, programmed to be alert from that time and I couldn't drift back to sleep and then my lack of breakfast just affected the rest of my day, I just felt out of sorts. That's when it dawned on me - my body prefers food the sleep. 


Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day if I have time to enjoy it. If I have plans to go out for brekkie I get WAY more excited about the food than I do with dinner - and I'm happy for the rest of the day. Even if it is a quick 5:30am rush job I have to eat breakfast, it's the meal that I see makes the most different to my mood for the whole day, so even if it's a bad bowl of crunchy nut (I use to have this all the time but now it's a 'I can't be arsed' occurrence) I try to always have something. So if you're stuck on how to incorporate a good brekkie into your morning routine, here are some tips I follow. 

Don't try the impossible

Unless you are some kind of magician you will not be able to whip up restaurant quality eggs Benedict in 15 minutes so don't waste your time. Toast things, chop, blend... Just don't try to cook. You'll just get frustrated and that's no way to start your day!

... But don't underestimate yourself either

Thinking that you only have time for a breakfast biscuit is acknowledging defeat. You'll be surprised by what you can whip up in 15 minutes (just not eggs benedict, guys). For example, porridge on the stove. My mum isn't big on microwaves so I grew up with the notion that things must be cooked on the stove and microwaves are simply for heating things up conveniently, so when my bestie, Nads, told me she COOKED her porridge in the microwave, my tiny mind was blown. Anyway, 15 minutes, that's plenty of time to cook porridge the regular way AND eat it! 

Dream about breakfast.

Literally, guys, not even joking here. It's bit like how I start thinking about lunchtime at circa 10am, but it actually does work. As I rest my head on my pillow at night my final thought is usually, 'porridge or fruit 'n' yogurt?!' And then I probably fall into a deep Greek yogurt related dream that I will never know about because they are wiped out by further dreams throughout the night involving post-apocalyptic worlds and me publicly mortified in various states of undress. 

If you really haven't got time, there are healthy grab and go options 

Again, you do have other options besides that breakfast biscuit bar (that is just a biscuit if we are honest to ourselves, people). If you don't have time to prepare and eat a healthy breakfast before stepping out, places like Pret have some great options. I love love love their Bircher pot - it's a healthy mixture of yogurt, seeds, nuts and fruit. And it tastes delicious so it's all winning here my friends.

If you're not hungry, think about your dinner sitch.

Eating too much, too late will probably have you waking up feeling a bit bloated and not in the mood for breakfast which will disrupt your meals for the rest of the day. If this happens too regularly you'll start an unhealthy pattern. Try and eat dinner as early as possible especially if you've diving face first into a plate of carby goodness!



If you give these tips a try I promise making breakfast a part of your morning routine will be a piece of pie! 

Almond Butter Porridge

When I first started my job I would kid myself that I just didn’t have time to eat a healthy breakfast, I would just have a quick bowl of cereal or even worse - nothing at home and then grab a muffin at the station only to find myself hungry again once I sat at my desk. I decided it was time to actually think about I was fuelling my body with. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day; it sets you up for the hours ahead so it needs to be substantial.

I love juicing and making smoothies in my Nutribullet some days, and if I opt for one I’ll normally go for my green berry breakfast smoothie or something including banana and oats. But when I’m after something a bit more warming I love to make porridge and more recently I’ve been obsessed with my almond butter offering.

I give myself about 20 minutes in the morning to make and eat my breakfast and that’s ample time to make a hearty bowl of porridge from scratch. I always make mine on the stove too as the idea of microwaving something as healthy as porridge makes no sense to me, and it takes less than 10 minutes. I swear.

You’ll need

Porridge oats

Milk

1 tsp of Almond Butter

A pinch of cinnamon

1 tsp of vanilla extract

Half an apple, chopped (I eat the other half as I get ready – Don’t waste it!)

A few pitted dates, chopped

Honey or Agave Nectar to taste

I find that everyone tends to like their porridge a different consistency so recipe-wise make it the way you enjoy it I love mine really really thick !

Add the cinnamon and the vanilla as the milk is warming and then the almond butter when it is beginning to combine. Continue to mix until the almond butter is completely blended into the porridge. I then pour the porridge into my bowl and then chop my fruit, but you can chop your fruit before hand, totally your call, guys.

The result is sweet and deliciously healthy and if I can whip this up at 5:30 in the morning, you really have no excuses not to try it!