Oh hello… What gives with all the radio silence lately, you ask? Well, things have been crazy busy for a long while now. Since we last spoke, I packed up my stuff and moved from New York City to The Netherlands to start graduate school. I moved in with my wonderful boyfriend and have been trying to adjust to a Dutch way of life which has been very great. Bicycle riding everywhere, eating loads of cheese, buying time with hookers, etc.
The hardest thing for me here is: NO OVENS! It seems like it is an extreme rarity to have an oven in your apartment here. The boyfriend and I have been living here for months now and have been learning to live without an oven. We’ve made things like microwave cake, skillet breads, etc. It’s been hard, but it’s really not all bad. We have been living like kings here. I won’t say that Europe is a vegetarian’s paradise, because it really really isn’t… but there are amazing green markets here with all sorts of delicious produce, so we cook everything for ourselves and it is great.
This morning, to celebrate completing our second graduate course, Phylogenetics and Genomics in Ecology, we slept in until noon and then made these beauties!
I replaced the eggs in these babies with half of a mashed up banana. It was partially to make these banana pancakes extra pancakey and partially because we didn’t have any eggs and neither of us felt like getting dressed and going to the grocery store.
There are a couple other special things about these pancakes… besides having the banana slices cooked into them instead of just laid on top of them, they have loads of cinnamon in them and were made with a milk-vinegar mixture instead of buttermilk (because I don’t know what the dutch word for buttermilk is and therefore can’t buy it in a store!). But actually, replacing the buttermilk with milk-vinegar I think makes a much better pancake. They are much fluffier and way less dense. So maybe that makes them healthier, but for sure it makes them tastier.
Alright, here you have it folks. Let’s get in to the nitty gritty:
Banana Cinnamon Pancakes
1.5 bananas
1 tbsp cinnamon (plus a little extra for sprinkling)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tbs butter
3/4 cup milk
2 tbs white vinegar
1. Mix the vinegar with the milk and let sit for a few minutes so that the milk can curdle. It sounds gross, I know… but it isn’t. This is how cheese is made, afterall! So it can’t be all bad.
2. While that’s going on, melt the butter and mash half of a banana. Then mix all of the ingredients together (except for that one banana).
3. Dump the curdled milk-vinegar mixture into all the other ingredients and stir until very smooth – get all the lumps out!
4. Let it sit for ~15 minutes (sometimes I do as much as 30!) to have time to get all bubbly – this is what will make your pancakes super fluffy. You want to actually see bubbles formed on top.
5. Chop up the one banana in thin slices and sprinkle with a little bit of your extra sprinkling cinnamon.
6. Put a little bit of oil in a skillet and heat over a medium-low flame. Drop in however much batter you would like. I do about a fourth of the batter per pancake.
7. Once little bubbles start to form on the top of the pancake, it is ready for flipping! Before you do so, plop as many little banana slices as you can on top. I like lots of bananas so I really cover the thing. Once covered, then you can flip! Cook until done. The bananas should get all caramelized and delicious… yummo!
8. Serve warm with a little bit of honey and a glass of milk. 
