These simple and tasty Blender Apple Cinnamon Pancakes are made with oats, flaxseed, and unsweetened applesauce for a delicious, gluten-free breakfast.
Pan-cakes! Full of apple cinnamon flavor and made with hearty oats and flaxseed meal, these pancakes are making mornings more bearable around here. This is even more true if you top them with some melted peanut butter and cooked apples. Yum.
A little more about these pancakes. The batter is all made in the blender. Just dump everything into the blender and let it do its thing. Easy, peasy. Then let the batter thicken up for a couple of minutes and you are ready to go. These pancakes can be made ahead of time and kept in the fridge or freezer for quick future breakfasts. Plus you can customize them anyway you like, adding nut butter, nuts, coconut, fruit, or grated apple for some extra apple kick. Just fold in your add-ins after blending the batter.
So... Where’s the Flour?
If you already read ahead and had a peek at the recipe, then you'll know that there is zero traditional flour here.
No, it isn’t an incomplete recipe.
The oats are the flour.
Or rather, the oats act in the place of flour in this case. Some blender pancake recipes call for blending your oats into flour, but others – like this one – will have you skip that step. Whichever way you prefer works just fine, since both ways give you the effect you need without a single speck of flour.
Can You Freeze Apple Cinnamon Pancakes?
Thanks to their spongy nature, pancakes are one of those amazing foods that freeze really well. Picture the frozen pancakes you see in the freezer aisle of grocery stores –
Businesses aren’t doing anything special to them to make them freeze better; pancakes just freeze well naturally!
However, that isn’t to say that you can just make your pancakes, throw them in a bag and freeze them – if you did that you would end up with a stack of pancakes all stuck together. Some use parchment paper between each pancake, then freeze the stack.
Another option, lay out your beautiful, fluffy pancakes in a single layer on a baking sheet, and stick that in the freezer. Each pancake will be individually frozen, and you'll be able to have them in a stack, and not stick to their neighbor when put in a freezer safe container!
Do I Have to Blend This Recipe?
This particular recipe calls for oats, so you'll need a blender – however, you could use any flour in place of the oats and mix it all by hand. You could also purchase pre-made oat flour. However, I highly recommend that if you have one, you use it, because the batter comes out perfectly mixed and fluffy.
And it saves you a sore arm from mixing!
Healthy Pancake Topping Ideas
So many people make delicious, healthy pancakes like these and then smother them in pancake syrup, butter, and other unhealthy toppings.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though! There are so many amazing healthy pancake toppings to pick from.
For your ease of use, I’ve made a list of some of them here, though I’m sure I’m missing some!
- Cacao Nibs or dark chocolate chips
- Coconut Whipped Cream
- Fresh Fruit
- Fruit Butter
- Honey
- Jam
- Pure Maple Syrup
- Nut Butter
- Yogurt
Can I add Protein Powder?
If you want to add some protein powder to your pancakes, feel free to do so. However, make sure to add some extra almond milk, as the protein powder will thicken the pancake batter quite a bit. After you’ve mixed in your protein powder, just add the almond milk a bit at a time – until it gets to a consistency that isn’t too thick or too liquid either.
One last tip on your protein powder: Go with vanilla or neutral flavored powder, since it's a nice, neutral sweet that works well in pancakes.
Perfect Pancake Tips
- Get a Griddle: I’ve always found that the tastiest pancakes are made on an electric griddle, so if you make a lot of pancakes in your house they are well worth the investment.
- Sweet Vanilla Taste: A few drops of vanilla extract will take any pancake out of this world.
- Keep Pancakes Warm: When making a large batch of pancakes, preheat the oven to a low temperature and put the pancakes in there on a cookie sheet or oven-safe platter while you cook the rest.
- Clean Working Surface: Whether you’re using a pan or a griddle, wipe down your cleaning surface in between pancakes. A quick wipe with a paper towel will do the job and help keep anything from sticking.
Other Healthy Pancake Recipes
- Lemon Blueberry Chia Pancakes
- Four Ingredient Healthy Pumpkin Pancakes
- Protein Packed Oatmeal Banana Pancakes
- Healthy Greek Yogurt Pancakes
- Three Ingredient Banana and Egg Pancakes