OK, using the great recipe provided, I posted earlier that I'd made some caraway-seed bread (Rye-ish) I'd used for yummy stuff. Can't wait to get my 'rye-flavoring' to add to the mix and try that again!
This morning I decided to try an experiment. I need more protein and more calories than I am getting, I can't eat meat all the time or eat as often as I should, so I was hoping to get both 'up' by modifying it a bit.
(Might have gone slightly overboard on the cals. Those on lower-cal diets could replace some butter with egg or even cottage cheese or something and add an extra Tbsp of protein powder and I bet that would work out with a little fussing.)
Since I am rather like I Love Lucy in the kitchen--a clutz who is lucky anything edible results (I'm a true shame to my Virgo x4 heritage)--this sort of evolved (or devolved) into what you see below.
CAVEATS:
The below was decently textured for pancake batter for the first pour-- because I was quick. By the second round, it had thickened up a LOT. By the third, the batter was nearly as firm as mashed potatoes! The extra butter and egg over the original recipe (top of thread) were my attempts to mellow out the thickness, and it was STILL like that. I finally just used it as-is and it didn't hurt anything... didn't seem to have any problem cooking through, the way normal pancakes would at that density. So if you try this, maybe be prepared to use more liquids. Or something.
I thought the sweetness was just right, but my protein powder is quite sweet on its own, so you might want to experiment with that element.
I reduced the baking soda to save carbs only to realize after it has no carbs even in a whole tsp. Doh. So that could be increased without harm, however, that stuff ain't doing much fluff-help with protein powder in the mix I don't think!
Flax Protein Pancakes
2 oz (half stick) of butter (cal 407 fat 46 carb 0 fib 0 prot 0)
3 eggs, large I think (cal 252 fat 18 carb 2* fib 0 prot 18) *~.6-.7ea
5 Tbsp flax meal (cal 200 fat 14 carb 6 fib 6 prot 3)
1/4 tsp baking soda (0 everything, even at 1tsp)
2 Tbsp protein powder (measured at 3 Tbsp per 'scoop')
1scoop of Designer Whey French Vanilla> cal 90 fat 1.5 carb 2 fib .5 prot 17.5
so 2/3 of that> cal 60 fat .5 carb .67 prot fib .17 prot 5.83)
(I cannot guarantee other proteins are edible this way.)
~1tsp 'apple pie spice' (which is cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice blended) (I gave it 2 carbs because cinnamon has that for 1 tsp, 6 cal)
1 tsp fiberfit (old formula = equiv 4.5 tsp sweet) (cal 4 fat 0 carb 1 fib 1 prot 0)
Assuming I had poured this all before it thickened like crazy, I think it would have made about six, 6" pancakes... that's an estimate. I call this "4 pancakes" for estimating serving counts just to be on the safe side.
Recipe Totals: Cal 929 Fat 78.5 Carb 11.67 Fiber 7.17 ECC 4.5 Prot 26.83
1/4: Cal 232 Fat 20 Carb 2.92 Fiber 1.8 ECC 1.12 Prot 6.7
NOW for the results.
I put butter on the first one and let it get melty and smeared it around a bit and then tasted it, to see if I needed to have more/less sweetener, or spice, or whatever, so I could experiment with each pancake.
It was GOOD! Wow! It really was reminiscent of some buckwheat-like kind of food. It was not 'light and fluffy' at all -- mostly thanks to the protein powder I added! -- but so what.
I had intended to melt butter, use maple syrup and some thickener, or maybe just to use my raspberry SF fruit topping or something.
But my mouth was so happy about the taste that it scarfed the whole first pancake down. My hand helped by just picking it up and stuffing it in. Those two! Ya just gotta keep an eye on em!
So on the second one, much thickened, this one I really did intend to put some kind of yummy stuff, maybe apricot SF jam (yum!!) on, especially given it was much thicker, but alas. My hand and my mouth conspired to eat it again!
That was about half the recipe; the third Waaaay overthick pancake was much larger as well.
So the third one finished, but...
... I couldn't eat it. I fully intended. But I had a hard time eating the last few bites of the second one for that matter.
It isn't just that there's a decent dose of protein. I can happily eat a 12oz steak without blinking and be willling to eat more. I think it's that there is also a lot of fiber and a lot of fat, and the three combined really knock your appetite out, my stomach was like, "No, no! No more!"
So... if you're feeding a hungry man this might be just the food.
This was good enough that although it's more like a health food pancake than a traditional one (fairly solid, and heavy on the buckwheatish flavor), it is GOOD, and there is no reason why anybody I know even high-carb people would dislike it with the topping of their choice.
IDEAS
Because this is a different texture than normal pancakes, it doesn't "absorb" stuff (like butter) quite the way they do. A little, not as much. I was thinking it would be interesting to do a version of this that was savory, and do crispy chunks of bacon, and some fried onions/mushrooms, into the batter, add a little bit of chicken bouillion crystals and black pepper instead of the sweeter-spice, no sugar of course, though it might be hard to find a protein powder that is un-sweet enough. If you used some of the bacon/onion/mushroom and their resultant drippings, with some cream and not/starch thickener and chicken bouillion to make a gravy, that would be yummy. Then, make it in like mini-muffin pans instead of as a pancake, bake it like that, and the gravy over, I'm thinking my dad is the sort who would love that kind of thing, a variant on the 'morning biscuit and gravy' concept. I may or may not ever try that but it sounded like an interesting idea.
This'd go well with blueberries or chopped nuts or chopped strawberries or even LC mini chocolate chips.