Michael has never liked anything made with whole cooked chickpeas. He eats around them in stews. He ignores hummus. Heavens forfend they should ever appear in a salad. But lately he’s been experimenting with winter squash croquettes as an alternative to roasted squash, squash soup, squash pasta sauce, squash pie, or double baked squash. Yesterday he made squash croquettes with chickpea flour. They were marvelous! (I’ll have to squeeze the recipe out of him.) This morning I used the leftover chickpea flour to make pancakes.

They were moist without being gooey. Flavorful enough to stand up to tomato jam. Light enough to support maple syrup. Yum. (The dark one was one of the first cooked. My pan had gotten too hot. Still delicious.)

And Michael loves them!

So does Zeke. (We are dining off of chairs and end tables due to my injuring my knee.) So, for those who may be interested, here’s my recipe:

Ingredients:

2/3 cup chickpea flour

1/3 cup regular flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

[I recommend fresh ground flour, but if store-bought is what you have, it’s what you have! For grinding chickpeas, you will have to put them through a blender first so they will fit through a grinder.]

1 tsp salt

1 Tbsp sugar

1 Tbsp baking powder

Whisk all dry ingredients together

3 Tbsp butter

1 extra large egg

1 1/4 cups buttermilk

Melt your butter in a 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave (or use a pan on the stove). Off heat, whisk in the egg when the butter is almost all melted. (Having a little unmelted butter means it isn’t too warm and shouldn’t cook your egg. 30 seconds in our microwave gets it to this stage.) The butter-egg mixture gave me half a cup of liquid. Add a cup of buttermilk and whisk with butter-egg mixture. Fold into flour mixture. My batter was too thick, so I added another quarter cup of buttermilk. It made a smooth, thick batter.

Drop by spoonfuls (depending on how large you like your pancakes) onto a heated griddle or heavy-bottomed pan. I use a Club aluminum fry pan. Cast iron works well too. Medium to medium high heat, depending on your stove top. When you see bubbles in the middle and the edges look dull instead of shiny, flip them over. They are done when they feel springy in the middle. I remove them to a warmed platter covered with a cotton dish cloth to keep warm while cooking the batch.

This made enough for three people. If you are cooking for two, use one cup of flour (easy to just omit the whole wheat), half tsp salt, 2 tsp baking powder, 2 tsp sugar, 2 Tbsp melted butter, 1 regular egg, and 2/3 cup buttermilk (plus any extra to get that creamy texture).

You can scale the recipe up as well.

You can substitute cooking oil for the butter for the lactose intolerant. Coconut oil changes the flavor, which anyone who uses coconut oil knows, but does because they like coconut!

Substituting margarine is a bit trickier because it adds water and reduces fat, which will affect consistency and may result in the pancakes sticking to the pan.

Bon appetit!