Pink Piggy Pancakes

Friends, I found it. The perfect pancake recipe!!! I've looked high and low and I think these taste restaurant-quality. The recipe, coupled with my new Food Network tip that if you overbeat pancakes to get all the lumps out, they'll be tough. *THAT'S why my pancakes are never fluffy?!?!?* Being a semi-perfectionist has it's downfalls...

This morning, Ryan asked for red pancakes and it got me thinking: I remembered a pancake recipe in the Deceptively Delicious cookbook that had pureed beets and, sure enough, we got beets in our basket at the produce co-op recently.

Hmmm...if I added more liquid (the puree) I'd have to add more dry ingredients, right? So while I was at it, why not sneak in some flax seed?

By the time I was done, I had complicated the recipe up quite a bit, but made it significantly healthier. And for those of you who like heathy, especially when it's delicious...THIS is for you. Here's what I came up with. Also, I divided the original ingredients list by 2/3 because our family isn't as big. (You can easily omit the beets and flax seed and I think that would keep the consistency. If not, add a little milk at the end.)

Pink Piggy Pancakes

2 eggs
1 cup nonfat, plain yogurt
1.5 cups milk
4 T. vegetable or canola oil
1/2 cup pureed beets
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup flax seed meal (fresh ground seeds is healthiest - I use our coffee grinder)
2 T. sugar
2 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1 t. salt

Mix wet ingredients first, then stir in the dry ingredients. DO NOT beat out the lumps to much or the pancakes will be tough. If the mixture is too thick for your taste, gradually add milk to thin it to your liking. Cook on a hot, sprayed griddle until golden brown. The leftovers freeze very well.

Yields: 12 pancakes (feeds my hungry family with a few leftover)

To make the piggies, make one large pancake and two smaller ones. Cut on of the smaller ones in 1/2 for the ears and use 2 chocolate chips for the eyes and 2 for the snout. (I got this idea from the Mom Advice blog - click here for her other kid recipes)

A buttermilk tip: if you make the original recipe that I linked to above, but don't have buttermilk, for every 1 cup of milk, you can add either 1 T. fresh lemon juice OR 1 T. white vinegar and let it sit for 5 minutes before adding it to your mixture. When I know something calls for buttermilk, I always do that first and let it sit while I get out the rest of the ingredients.