Fluffy Yummy Pancakes that You Won't Know are Dairy-Free

During the week it's rush, rush, rush in the mornings, but on weekends it's so nice to sit and relax with a hot breakfast and cup of tea.  One of our family favourite's would have to be pancakes.  We make the light fluffy American style pancakes rather than the thin European style.  After becoming dairy-free I would almost cry when I came downstairs to see my family eating pancakes, and I couldn't have any.  Well cry no more.  I have come up with a dairy-free version of pancakes that my whole family enjoys.

Jamie Oliver has a pancake recipe in his book The Ministry of Food, which is super easy to remember - 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of milk and 1 egg.  I like the idea of such a simple recipe that you can just make from memory without having to look up the recipe.  Mine is slightly more complicated, but still simple as there is only 1 of everything.

Ingredients:
1 cup of self-raising (self-rising) flour
1 egg (or I use an egg replacer - see notes)
1 cup of milk - I use almond milk
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon bi-carbonate of soda (baking soda)

Method:

The first step is to make buttermilk.  That is, soured milk.  To do this, add 1 tablespoon of white vinegar (or lemon juice) to your milk, and leave it for 10-15 minutes.  Meanwhile gently heat a frying pan so it's ready.

Place the flour and the extra bi-carb soda in a bowl.  Add the egg and the buttermilk and whisk together.

The batter will be quite runny.  I cook my pancakes in a 20cm/8" non-stick fry pan.  I find this size pan gives me a lovely round shaped pancake.  Make sure the pan is hot (med-high heat) before adding the batter.

Brush the pan with a little macadamia oil (or just use a good non-stick pan), then pour some batter in the pan.  I use a soup ladle which is about half a cup.

Cook until there are lots of bubbles on top of the pancake.  It will look like this

It is now ready to turn over.  This is the fun bit.  Lift the pancake up with a spatula and flip it over.  Sometimes I have a second bigger fry pan on the next burner and just turn the small fry pan upside down over the bigger fry pan.  That way I can start the second pancake while the first one is finishing.

Keep going until you have made all the pancakes.  You will get about 3-4 pancakes from this batter.  Using the soup ladle I get 3.  You can easily double the recipe - it woud just be 2 of everything.  Now top with your favourite pancake topping.

Personally, I can't go past fresh berries with maple syrup and a little icing sugar.

Delicious and you wouldn't know it was dairy free.

What is Maple Syrup?

Maple syrup is the sap from maple trees.  The trees are tapped in spring to remove the sap, which is heated to evaporate the water leaving a concentrated sucrose sap with no colouring or additives.  The Canadian provence of Quebec produces 75% of the world's maple syrup.  Store in the refrigerator once opened.  Beware of maple flavoured syrups which are largely sugar (often high-fructose corn syrup) with added colour and flavourings.   You can learn more about maple syrup at Wikipedia here. 

What is Buttermilk?

Buttermilk used to be the liquid that came churning cream into butter.  Traditionally, to make butter, whole milk would be left to sit for a while so the cream would separate from the milk.  During this time, lactic acid bacteria would grow, fermenting the milk, and giving it a slightly tart, acidic taste. The cream would be churned into butter, and the remaining liquid was buttermilk.  Now buttermilk is made artificially by adding a cultured lactic acid bacteria to homogenized and pasteurized low-fat milk.

According to  Stephanie Alexander in The Cooks Companion, when you use buttermilk in place of milk in a recipe you should add half a teaspoon of bicarbonate soda for every cup of milk, to neutralise the acid in the buttermilk, so the cake/pancake will rise properly.  I've added a whole teaspoon of bicarb soda to this recipe so I get light and fluffy pancakes.

Egg Replacers
Where a recipe calls for eggs, try using:

• a commercial egg replacer
• 2 egg whites for every 1 egg
• 75ml oil or soy yoghurt for 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon ground flax seeds plus 3 tablespoons water
• 1 tablespoon cornflour plus 2 tablespoons of water

For a full list of egg replacement ideas see Chef In You here

A White Chippy Footstool

Well hello, do I have a classic for you today?  Those of you on instagram will know that I recently bought an Ikea Ektorp sofa for my 'empty room'.  I love it to bits.  It's so nice to have a little area where I can sit and read.  Problem is you need somewhere to put your cup of tea or glass of wine where it won't get knocked over.

I have seen so many lovely chippy stools on blogs and pinterest, so I decided that's what I needed.  Well I didn't need to look any further than the storage area above the garage and I found one.

This was the stool my husband made at school for woodworking.  Do they still even do woodworking as a subject anymore?  It has his name and class 10GA1 written underneath.

Look at that handywork.  How good is that glue joint?  Despite appearances, it's actually a very solid and sturdy stool, so I gave it a lick of paint and a little roughen up.

How I did it

Step 1 - Lightly sand and give the stool a coat of burnt umber paint (I use Jo Sonja's acrylic).  I wanted a deep brown to come through rather than the orange colour.

Step 2 - Give the stool a couple of coats of white paint.  I used Dulux aqua-enamel in Whisper White.

This is an instagram photo I took while I was doing it.

Step 3 - Roughen it up a bit.  Sand the edges and use a screwdriver or blade to scratch some paint off.  Kristen from The Painted Hive uses a surfboard wax comb.  Mine ended up looking like this:

Some of my favourite books and a rose from the garden, and it's all pretty.

Even my husband is happy with it.  I did ask him if I could paint it first ... just in case.

I'll be back in a couple of days to share the best pancake recipe for the weekend ... yum.  Don't forget my tin hearts giveaway is still open.  You can enter here.

Sharing at French Country Cottage, Miss Mustard Seed, Scandi Coast Home

Silver Hearts Giveaway

I have some beautiful silver tin hearts as a giveaway to say thank you.

I started blogging on May 16, 2011. This is my 170th post in the past 18 months.  In that time I have met (either online or in person) some amazing people and fellow bloggers.  I became addicted to pinterest, then instagram, and I got diagnosed with MS.  A pretty big 18 months.  A couple of weeks ago my blog was hacked.  It was so stressful that I was about to hit the big delete blog button, but I realised how much blogging and the blogging community means to me.  Instead I asked Katrina from The Media Maid to give this blog some love and weave her magic, so now I have a fresh new look.

Throughout this time the kindness and support I have experienced has been amazing, so I want to say thank you to you all.  I'm not a big business blogger, so this giveaway is not sponsored.  I saw these tin hearts in Pillow Talk and bought them especially as a thank you present.

One is a small loop of hanging hearts - there are 3 small hearts and three large hearts hanging from jute strings (see above).  The second item is a garland of hearts about 90cm long with 5 small hearts and 4 big hearts.  I like hearts.

There are no strings attached to this giveaway.  Well there are strings attached to the hearts but not the giveaway.  To enter just leave a comment below.  If you'd like to be my friend on facebook, or stay in touch via email, google+ or instagram, then that's great - I love the friends and community there.

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Entries close Sunday 18th November.  I will notify the winner on Monday 19th November.  Entries are for Australia only due to postage.

Sharing this giveaway at Aussie Giveaway Linkup

Fab Finds for Five Dollars

Hello lovely ladies,

Well you can't get much for $5 anymore can you?  Maybe a cup of coffee?  In the past couple of weeks, I've stumbled across a few things that I think are pretty fab for less than $5.  

Wrought iron bird garden stake. $5 - Bunnings

Hanging chalkboard sign.  Reduced from $10 to $5 - Typo

Mini chalkboard hanging signs $1.95 - Wheel & Barrow

Clearly with all that chalkboard, you need chalk $2.95 - Typo

I love these glossy laminated white board lever arch files for sorting out the paperwork $2 each - Officeworks

and to make them stylish, these Martha Stewart adhesive bookplates, slightly over budget at $5.49 for 3 - Officeworks

Finally to get into the Christmas spirit, a DIY Christmas cracker set complete with bad jokes, less than $3 - Spotlight.

So there you go, you can still find some fab things for less than 5 dollars.  If you've found any bargains lately, please share them with us.  At this time of year I'm always looking out for stocking fillers and small gifts.

Sharing at Savvy Southern Style, Home Stories AtoZ

The Overcoming MS Retreat - I'm Back

I'm back from my 5 day Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis retreat in the Yarra Valley and I feel like a whole new person.

I spent 5 very busy and emotional days with 34 other people learning all about MS, current medical information, and all the diet and lifestyle choices I can make to improve my quality of life.

Here's a quick summary of what I learnt.  I think most of these apply to all of us, not just the 1 in 1,000 with MS.

• Eat more fruit and vegetables.  I know, we all mean to, but they are so important to our nutrition.
• Get some vitamin D.  Get 10-15 minutes of all over sun or if it's cloudy take a vitamin D supplement.  You will start hearing a lot about how Australians have become vitamin D deficient over the next few years.
• Eat more omega 3 in place of saturated fat in your diet.  Choose fish over meat.
• Avoid highly refined vegetable oils, trans fats, and hydrogenated oils - they're not good, and they're in so many foods we buy.  Read the labels.
• Eat real food rather than processed food.  If the ingredient list has 20 items listed and many of them have numbers, give them a miss.
• Exercise.  Swim, ride a bike, do something a little more than just walking.  It's not for weight loss.  It's for your health. 
• Meditate or take some quiet 'me' time daily.  Slow your breathing down.
• Find ways to reduce or eliminate stress in your life.
• Look after your emotional, social and spiritual side - build a support network of friends & family.  Laugh often - it's good medicine!

The retreat was truly a life changing experience, and I highly recommend it to anybody with MS or there was one lady there with motor-neuron disease.  If you have MS or know somebody with MS, please email me and I'll happily tell you more about it.  You can get a free copy of the book Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis from The Gawler Foundation here.

Yesterday was day 1 of my recovery plan.  I swam 750 metres in the pool at my gym.  I made my first batch of bircher muesli.  I ate sardines on toast for lunch - not nearly as disgusting as it sounds.  My whole family had steamed snapper with Asian flavours and vegetables for dinner.  I bought a yoghurt making kit, so I can make my own soy yoghurt.  I used a meditation app to meditate for 15 minutes.  Not quite the one hour of daily meditation we did at the retreat, but it's a start.  Today is day 2.  More changes to make.

Thanks for all your lovely comments and support from my last post.  I appreciate it.

The MS Moonlight Walk & an MS Retreat

Tonight is the MS Moonlight Walk.  Thousands of people will be walking a 5 or 10 km route along Brisbane's Southbank in the hope of raising $300,000 to help the 23,000 people in Australia living with MS.  

I had planned on getting a team together and doing the walk myself, but my calendar quickly clashed, and family comes first.  My daughter has a big musical theatre concert on Sunday, and I won't be able to see it as I am attending an MS retreat for the week, flying out of Brisbane Sunday morning.  The only chance I will have to see her perform is during the dress rehearsal tonight which is at the same time as the walk.

MS Retreat

I will not be blogging or on instagram for the next week.  I am attending the Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis retreat at The Gawler Foundation in the Yarra Valley, just outside of my hometown Melbourne.  It's a small intimate retreat of 38 people with MS, or their carers.  It's run by Professor George Jellinek who wrote the book Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis.  I think it will be educational, emotional and a little confronting.

Why am I going to a retreat to learn self-help and self-healing techniques?  Because whilst I inject myself daily with medicine that costs over $1,000 per month*, I believe there is more to good health and living well than relying on medicine.  I believe the food we eat, and the way we choose to live our lives are just as important.

I tried so hard to think of a way to explain why I am so determined to look after myself and how it feels, but it's so hard ... it's so personal.  If you have 4 minutes to spare, please listen to Tricia's story as I think she explains how we all feel really well.

If you would like to know more about the MS Moonlight walk or would like to sponsor somebody who is walking, visit the web site here.

* I am grateful that I live in Australia, and that the huge cost of my medicine is largely covered under the pharmaceutical benefits scheme (PBS).

Coconut Jelly

One of the best parts of going to Chinatown for yum cha, is that after you eat all those beautiful steamed dumplings, you can have a square of coconut jelly. There are health arguments for and against coconut (as with many foods), but as I am trying to achieve a low saturated fat diet (reasons here), I have left coconut products out of my diet.  Problem is, I love the taste of coconut, and coconut jelly would have to be one of my favourites, so can I make coconut jelly using substitutes?  Here's my version of coconut jelly.

Ingredients:
2 cups, 500ml Almond Milk
2 teaspoons, 10ml coconut essence (or to taste)
1/4 - 1/3 cup of caster sugar (or to taste)
2 teaspoons, 4grams of agar agar powder

Method:

Put all the ingredients (cold or at room temperature) in a saucepan and mix well.

Bring the liquid to the boil (you can stir while the liquid is heating), whisk well, then remove from heat.

Pour the liquid into a jelly mould or a Pyrex dish to set (I use a 3 cup pyrex dish with a lid).

As the ingredients cool the jelly will set -  at room temperature or in the fridge.  The key ingredient here is the agar agar.  Not enough and the jelly won't be firm enough.  Too much (say 5g) and the jelly will be too firm and chewy.  Once the jelly has set, cut into squares and serve.

Coconut jelly is delicious served with mango or passionfruit.

To make normal coconut jelly follow the above recipe but replace the milk and essence with coconut milk.  I made both versions for my family, and they said the coconut version wasn't as sweet as the almond milk version, so you may have to increase the sugar in the coconut milk version.  The almond milk version was sweet enough for my taste.

What is Agar Agar?

Agar agar is a natural substance that comes from red algae seaweed.  Agar agar is used throughout Asia to make jellies and as a thickener for liquids.

The advantage of using agar agar is that:

• it's suitable for vegetarian and vegan diets
• it can set the jelly to a much firmer consistency than gelatin  so you can cut the jelly into squares to serve,
• and once set, agar agar is stable in warm temperatures, so it won't melt like jelly.  You can keep agar agar jelly at room temperature.  It doesn't have to stay in the fridge (no wonder it's popular in Asia).

Agar agar comes in flakes, powder, and as threads or bars.  I'm not an expert on them.  I have only used the agar agar powder, which I buy in sachets from the Asian supermarket.  A 25 gram packet is less than A$2, and will make at least 6 serves of jelly.

Although agar agar is a natural product it is listed as E406 if you are reading food labels.

Further Reading on agar agar is at Chefs Armoury here.

Sharing at House of Hepworths