Family Friendly Banana Pancakes Recipe

It's pancake morning, so we are making some banana pancakes. These are Noah's favourite pancakes. They're only a special occasion treat. We do this on the weekend when we have a bit of time. But they're very simple to make and I think I might have a little helper alongside. So we need a couple of bowls. We've got some bananas here. I'm going to use about three. One in the batter, two to caramelise alongside. We need some flour. I've got some all-purpose flour. We need a little bit of baking powder for a bit of a rise. What else do we need? A little bit of vanilla extract as well. Some cinnamon. I can never find where I leave my cinnamon. Hey, you! Come on! Let's go make some pancakes. You want to help, Papa? A little touch of cinnamon is going to go a long way. I've got some salt. And then our wet ingredients as well. So we've got some milk. I actually have some buttermilk here, which would work quite nicely. But just regular milk will do. We need some eggs. And I think that's it. I have been making these pancakes for years, but I always still just double-check. Oh, a little bit of butter. Butter is kind of essential to these pancakes because it gives a richness to them, but also as you fry them off, you get that lovely buttery taste. So, right, let's grab my helper. Noah, come to Yelp for Papa. We're going to make the pancakes. Come. Come, let's go. Should we turn him off? Teeth up here. Will you get your stool? Okay. So we're making some banana pancakes this morning. I have a little helper. The most annoying stool in the world. Imagine that at 6 a.m. in the morning. Hi, are we going to make some pancakes? Put the flour in there. Okay, so we've got to weigh it out, so put this on. One thing I would say that really helps is if you pre-measure these out into jars, you can have them ready to go when you want to add the wet mix, and it's very easy. Can you pour it in? Okay, we go 200 grams. Okay, good job. Very good concentration, right? Will you put the milk in? Okay, we've got to get the baking powder first. So we've got two teaspoons of baking powder. Will you do it? Okay. He's very good at helping in the kitchen. Will you hold that for Papa? Okay, we do a little spoon. Put it in. One. And then a little bit more. A little bit more. Two. Good work. That's very good. We're working on counting at the moment, so one and two and three is good, and then it gets a little bit complicated after that. It's kind of the same for me. To this, we're going to add some cinnamon. Will you pour it in? Go like this. Now, you don't have to add the cinnamon here, but I think it adds a really nice flavour alongside the banana, which works quite well. We're going in there with a pinch of salt. Can you do a pinch of salt? No, do it? Go pinch, pinch, pinch. A little pinch. You only need just a very small amount to kind of counteract the sweetness of the banana that we're going to add in here. We're not adding any sugar here. Literally, we're just going to use the sweetness of the banana to really give it a lovely flavour. So that's pretty much our dry ingredients. Now we need to talk about our wet ingredients, right? Yeah. So into this bowl, we're going to pour in our milk, and we're going to weigh it out into millilitres. So we've got about 220 millilitres going in here. Can we pour it in? Yeah. What? Yeah. Very hard to concentrate when you're in the kitchen with a two-year-old, but we're getting there. So 220 millilitres. You want to put the egg in here? Yeah. We're going to whisk the egg together. Now, we're going to put in two eggs in here. This is one of the easiest pancake mixes you can make, and it's very simple to make. Are you going to crack the egg for Papa? Papa. Oh, you want to put that in there? Papa, crack it. Oh, Papa, crack it? Yeah. Okay. I never really thought I was going to be called Papa, but Sophie is Swedish, and so Papa is what they call Dad in Swedish. So now you call me Papa, right? Two eggs in here. Okay. One, two, three. And now we're going to whisk it together. Now, once you have your wet and your dry ingredients in, oh, are you putting salt in there as well? A little pinch won't harm us, so we'll stick it in. We're going to put a little bit of vanilla extract in. Okay, help Papa. I'm going to put a tiny little bit. Oh, loads. Now, do you want to whisk? So Papa has a whisk, and Noah has a whisk. I'll get a Noah. That's Papa's one, and this is for Noah. So will you whisk, whisk, whisk? Good job. Go for it. Whip, whip, whip, whip, whip, whip, whip, whip, whip, whip, whip, whip, whip, whip, whip, whip. Now, like I said, we want these to be banana pancakes, so we want to add a little bit of banana flavor in there as well. So we're going in there with one banana, just nicely mashed. Again, like I said, no sweetness apart from the banana going in there, which is kind of good. I like the idea that these are somewhat healthier than you normally would have. So we'll give it a mash. There's a lot of things to be thinking of in the kitchen this morning. But look, these are a very simple pancake mixture to do. Whoa! Okay, you mash, and I'll whisk. You want to eat some? Yeah, you want to try? Isn't it nice? This is literally the only reason he hangs out with me in the kitchen, is because he knows there's food and he knows that you can get a little taste of something as it goes. Are you mash, mash, mashing? Mash, mash, mash. Are we going to mash? Do you want a bit more? I don't know where this is coming from. Okay, we mash the rest? Yeah. Okay, let me help you. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Wow! Now, with our dry ingredients, all you want to do is give this a sort of rough whisk just to combine all those ingredients together. And to the center of this, we're going to basically kind of create a little well to pour in our wet ingredients. So, into our wet ingredients, we're going to add our bananas. If you don't eat every single one, and we scrape it in. Okay, scrape, scrape, scrape. No, pour it in. Okay, okay. Will you do this? You take this one? Ready? One, two, three. Whoa! Good job, Noah! Okay, you get every last bit? Just like his dad gets every last little bit. Now, whisk, whisk, whisk. Yeah. Wow! This is the best bit of cooking in the kitchen with kids because literally, as soon as you get flour and you get liquid, you've got basically glue that they can play with all day long. In the meantime, I'm going to get some heat on our pan over here so we can crack through. Oi, oi, oi, oi, careful, careful, careful. You don't want to put it all over there. You're going to mix, mix, mix gently. So, give it a last whisk. And look, we're going to take all the flour. Look, we're going to take all the flour, and we're going to make it into a nice smooth mix. Like that. Is that good? Now, typically, if I had time, I would rest this pancake batter in the fridge. But sometimes, in the morning, on a Saturday, at about 6am, there is no time for resting. You've just got to get pancakes on the pan. You won't get them as fluffy, but it will still work. Did you just try some? Don't tell Mama, okay? Or I'll get in trouble. To be honest, Mama doesn't care once she gets a lie-in, and I'm looking after Noah. Get your fingers out of that! So, once you have the pancake batter at this point now, the only ingredient we need to add is some melted... Do you want to add some melted butter? Yeah. Okay, let's bring it over here. Can you bring your stool? Come! Okay, we get some butter. But this is not for you to eat. He basically has this thing where he wants to eat butter. I don't know if it's his element of being Irish. Let's just stick it in the microwave. This is not to eat now. We're going to put it in the pancakes. Come, we get your stool over. I'll bring the stool over here. And I'm just going to bung this in the microwave for ease of getting things on. So, you just want a little touch of the melted butter. That's going to go into the batter and give you really lovely taste, but it's also going to help kind of create a sort of non-stick situation. Now, in alongside our pancakes, we're also going to make some caramelized bananas, which are the go-to in our house. They're very simple. No, we do not eat the batter. Stop eating the batter. And we also have a little bit of that melted butter. Now, we're going to do two things with the melted butter. Number one, we're going to pour some in the batter. But I also make up what I like to call my little sort of kitchen paper mopper situation. So, come over here. This is what I've been doing for years. Every time I make pancakes, and I've never really been able to describe it when I write a recipe, you basically fold a bit of kitchen paper up like this. So, you take a little bit into the batter, and then you use the rest to basically mop across the base of the pan. I can't explain it, but it works a treat because you get a really nice easy way to get the butter onto the pan. Now, the heat is up on the pan, so we're just going to stir through that butter and give it a moment just to mix through. You mix, mix, mix. Okay, mix it up. Good job. Okay, we put it in the pan. We're going to do it very careful. Good job. Now, we turn the pan. You've got to be very careful. So, we're going to make little sort of, I would say it's about a heaped tablespoon of the mixture on. And, will Papa do the rest? Will you run to Mama? Tell Mama what we did. Tell Mama about the pancakes. This is a good moment to get rid of Noah because it means that you can actually get the pancakes on and get them cooking. Okay, while they're cooking off and getting nice and golden brown, we are going to basically caramelise up some bananas. This is a very easy thing to do and really the best part of it is that you get these gorgeous caramelised sweet bananas at the end of it. And, it's a real treat over the top of these beautiful and very simple pancakes. So, I'm just going to peel up two bananas. I'm going to get the pan on heat while we're cooking away. I'm going to take up a little bit of butter and get that into the pan. And, the beautiful thing is just how easy this is because it's really about a simple thing that you can just top the pancakes with and make life a little more simple. With the bananas, all I'm going to do is do a nice kind of diagonal slice on these. What's happening? Have you got a book? Are we going to read a book? Oh, you've got a book for us to read. What? We're going to read the book and eat some pancakes. Okay, will we put them on the pan? Will you bring it up? Will you read it up here? Uh-oh, I smell pancakes. They need to be turned. Okay, so we've turned pancakes. The stool has been moved over here. Are you wanting to make more? We make the bananas first, okay? So, we've got some butter melting down here. I'm just going to grab up a bowl and we're going to toss our bananas in them. So, a little bit of sugar. I'm just using a light brown sugar. Use whatever sugar you can get your hands on quickest. So, we're going to pop our bananas in here and we're going to give them all a good toss and then we're going to tumble it straight into the pan. The whole idea here is just to toss those bananas in the sugar. You don't have to worry about them being perfectly coated here. All you're looking for is that sugar to go into the pan with the butter to create a nice sort of caramel. So, straight into that hot pan with that little bit of sugar. You want to see a bit of contact of the bananas with the pan. So, just kind of spread them across the pan. And our pancakes are pretty much almost done here. So, I'm going to give the hands a quick wash and come in here and have a look at this because now we've sort of created a bit of a caramel. We've got gorgeous things happening with the banana. And if you weren't cooking for kids, a splash of booze at this point would be very good. And maybe if you are cooking with kids, a splash of booze might help you and not the children. But don't serve it to the kids. So, our pancakes are looking good at this point. Of course, the utensils I need are never where they need to be. But we're going to crack on anyway. So, we're going to make a nice stack of pancakes. Yum, yum, yum, yum. We'll do some more. More. And the great thing about this is not only do you have just a very simple pancake batter but you also have that lovely scent with that exotic flavour of banana running through it. And then we're going to pop this over here. Are you ready to try some, Noah? You're going to eat some? And then we're going to add our lovely bananas all the way over. Hey, Noah. Come here. Come and look. Come up and have a look. So, we have all those beautiful bananas in and around. We're going to get them. You want to try some? Is it hot, hot? We have all the gorgeous stuff happening. It's a little bit messy. It's a little haphazard, but that's okay. Now, not that it needs it, but I do think a little drizzle of something nice on top would be good. There we go. This is something I've started using a lot more of, a little touch of date syrup. It is absolutely gorgeous and it gives you this sort of rich, toffee sweetness. Are we going to go for a drizzle? Just a little, little bit over the sides. This is the only spoon Noah likes to eat. It's got little Swedish cartoons on it, and this is the one he likes to eat with. Okay, let me try some. One for Noah. No, no, no, down. Let's do this. No, no, no, down. Sometimes he only wants to eat off his own plate. Did you try some? Sometimes he has this thing where he only wants to eat off his plate, and then other times he just wants to eat off our plate. So, you never really know what it's going to be. Oh, sorry. Okay, I'll let you tuck in. As you can see, it gives you great results. You get beautiful pancakes. Let's try one. Want it out of my mouth? Do you want this one? The Papa Eater? The Paul Eater? So, as you can see, a very simple recipe to make. Absolutely delicious. A really great weekend option, especially if you have some helping hands in the kitchen. If you want the recipe details, as always, we'll leave them in the box below. But until then, we're off to eat a stack of pancakes. We'll see you soon. Have a great weekend. Hey, is that Papa's pancake?