Healthy Pancake Hack Drives me Bananas
By Amelia Spence, Content & Publishing Editor

Recently, along with dance trends and workout regimens, I’ve been seeing a lot of “healthy eating” tips and tricks from people finding creative ways to eat clean in quarantine. This includes vegan recipes, endless smoothie bowls, and loads and loads of kombucha. Many of these recipes intrigued me, and a few disgusted me, but only one made me actively angry: banana-egg pancakes.

At first, this sounded perfectly normal. People add fruit to pancakes all the time, bananas included. But what truly disgusted me, what brought my blood to a boil, was that bananas were not merely an addition to the pancakes, but one of two ingredients. People were blending together banana and egg, throwing it into a pan, and calling it a pancake! Disgusting. Eggs mixed with bananas is not a pancake; it’s a pathetically bad omelet parading as a fun breakfast treat.

I had never almost come to blows over a pancake recipe before (or any recipe, for that matter), so I knew, no matter how inedible I thought they might end up, I had to try these pancakes against which I had taken such a stance; I had to face my fears.

“Healthy” Pancakes
One banana
Two eggs
Pinch of salt

Steps: Mash the banana, and then whisk in the eggs until combined. Add a pinch of salt, and then cook in a greased pan over medium heat.

I hate to say it, but some of these were pretty good. Not the initial recipe; that was pretty terrible. The texture was chewy rather than cakey like a pancake, and the flavor profile would be best described as sweet eggs. Adding maple syrup only helped by masking the disconcerting taste of eggs mixed with banana. However, after making several plain ones, I wanted to give this recipe a fighting chance by adding a few more ingredients. I mixed in some cocoa powder and chocolate chips, and those ones were honestly delicious. The sweet banana mixed with the cocoa powder for a chocolate flavor that completely (thankfully) overpowered the egg. It tasted so good, I didn’t even think about the slightly rubbery texture.

Recipe rating: ⅘

The initial recipe was almost as bad as I expected, but with a bit of tweaking, it quickly became something I enjoyed. The point off is because this was supposed to be a healthy alternative to pancakes, and the fact that I had to add chocolate chips to help make it palatable counteracts that intention. Otherwise, I liked the chocolate “pancakes” quite a bit and will likely make them again!