Buckwheat Pear Pancakes

Sometimes I have a hankering for eating something specific, and this morning it was pancakes. On a crisp fall Sunday morning, this sounded like the perfect breakfast.

Not sure if I've mentioned my marathon training yet, but - for the past three months I've been training for the Santa Barbara Marathon with Team in Training. As the mileage has continued to creep up each week (next Saturday I'm running 20 miles, the longest I've ever run before), I've had to be more and more careful with what I eat. And the thing is...I want to be.

The more I run, the faster and stronger I want to get and much of that has to do with what I eat. As my coaches say, "You are what you eat." I've heard this before, but training for a marathon has made it more real for me than ever before.

Needless to say, these days I'm really trying to cut down on the sugar, processed food, and saturated fat in my diet. And at the same time figuring out new ways to eat good, nourishing food. Which is how the buckwheat pancakes came about. When I woke up wanting pancakes this morning, I knew that I wanted to make a healthier version of this breakfast treat. Buckwheat flour, which I picked up a while ago from my local food co-op, is a whole grain flour with a distinct nutty flavor, and its loaded with magnesium and other heart healthy benefits. Making it the perfect flour substitute in my pancakes.




Also, instead of regular sugar I used honey. A friend recently turned me on to the idea of using honey instead of sugar. She was telling me that up to a certain point you can use a one to one ratio of honey over sugar. I'm pretty sure it was at least 1 cup, so my substitution worked out just fine in this recipe.



I added the pears for the fun of it. I thought they were a nice flavor combination with the buckwheat, and I like how cooking them directly into the pancake batter softened and toasted them just perfectly.



Buckwheat Pear Pancakes
adapted from Betty Crocker's Fast Pancake Recipe

makes 9 medium sized pancakes

1 large egg
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 teaspoons baking powder
3 pinches salt
1/2 pear, thinly chopped

Beat egg in a medium bowl with a fork until fluffy. Stir in the remaining ingredients, except the pear just until smooth. Heat skillet over medium heat or to 375. Grease pan with butter.

For each pancake, pour about 1/4 cup batter onto the skillet. Place the thinly chopped pears into the batter. Cook until bubbly on top, puffed and dry around the edges. Turn and cook on the otherside until golden brown.

Notes:
- Next time I might try using all buckwheat flour to see what it tastes like, or adding chopped nuts instead of pears. There are all kinds of combination's to try here.
- This was a great recipe for two, but I would definitely plan to double it if there were more people coming for breakfast, or I wanted left overs for the week.