At the beginning of 2019, Health Canada released its new dietary suggestions with a revised Canada Food Guide. This guide is different than previous versions with greater emphasis on conscious eating and mindfulness, plant-based options, and getting back to cooking whole foods in the kitchen.
Today I tried out a recipe from the Health Canada website which is full of great meal ideas and suggestions for healthy eating.
We are big breakfast lovers around here, especially on weekends when I have time to make something extra special. I have to say, these turned out to be some of the tastiest pancakes I have ever made! Keep reading to see how simple this tasty recipe is!
Strawberry Pancakes
Equipment
- Two mixing bowls – small and medium
- Cutting board
- Knife
- Griddle ( I used a skillet, pictured further down)
- Spatula (not pictured)
- Whisk (Or use a fork and a wooden spoon like me)
- Measuring cups for dry and liquid ingredients
- Measuring spoons
Ingredients
Baking powder, cinnamon, white sugar 
Oil, milk, egg, vanilla 
Diced fresh strawberries 
Whole wheat flour, white flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/2 cup white flour
- 2T white sugar
- 2 t baking powder
- “Pinch” of cinnamon (I used about 1/2 heaping teaspoon – we like cinnamon!)
- 1 1/2 c skim milk (I used 1% as that is what we had on hand)
- 1 egg (mine was a large size)
- 2 T canola oil
- 2 t vanilla
- 1 cup diced strawberries
Method
- To begin, I mixed my dry ingredients in a medium sized mixing bowl. This included both flours, baking powder, sugar and cinnamon. I used a wooden spoon because I don’t have a whisk although that is what the recipe suggested.
2. In a small mixing bowl, I then blended the wet ingredients together which included the milk, egg, oil and vanilla. I used a fork to whisk it all and get things nice and fluffy.
3. Then I incorporated the two mixtures together by adding the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and stirred to combine using a wooden spoon.
4. Next, I added my diced strawberries. I diced them fairly small so every pancake had a little taste.
4. Using approximately 1/3 c of batter per pancake (because we like slightly larger pancakes than what was suggested), I cooked them for approximately 2 minutes on each side and repeated this until all my batter was used.
In the end, I was left with a delicious little stack of 10 pancakes that were a bit hit with everyone in my house. I appreciated that the use of whole wheat flour was a simple swap for using only white flour that upped the nutritional value but kept it tasting great.
This recipe follows the new guidelines by incorporating whole wheat flours which reduces some of the highly processed white flour you might otherwise use alone. Also, it is salt-free, full of fruit and low in added sugar and fat, with just 2 T oil and low-fat milk. In fact, I think you could easily do with even less sugar because the amount of fruit in this recipe already makes it somewhat sweet.
I regret not taking a picture of the finished product plated using the healthy plate guidelines – I ended up snapping a picture of what I served my boyfriend. Serving myself using the guidelines from Health Canada, I would probably have two pancakes, 1/2 cup low fat yogurt and fill the rest of my plate with some nice fresh fruit.
As a personal suggestion, if you are trying to reduce sugar but you can’t have pancakes without a maple syrupy taste, try mixing a tablespoon of pure maple syrup in one cup of low-fat plain yogurt and use it as a dip. It’s a nice hint of the flavour but keeps your sugar intake nice and low.
My daughter is also looking forward to having some of these in her lunch tomorrow 🙂
Nutritional Value Per 2 Pancakes
Nutrition facts label created on happyforks.com
Roots and Foods 