Banana Protein Pancakes Recipe

Even as someone who loves a savory breakfast of bacon and eggs, I can admit that pancakes are undeniably one of the best breakfast foods of all time. There's just something charming about a fluffy stack of doughy discs, especially on slow weekend mornings that are filled with large cups of coffee. Perhaps it's those same magical mornings that make pancakes feel like such a treat; or maybe it's the fact that pancakes themselves are a little indulgent.

Though pancakes might not be an everyday breakfast regardless of ingredients, it's easy enough to add ingredients that make the weekend treat a nutritious indulgence. By adding in bananas and cottage cheese, we not only give our pancake recipe a good amount of potassium, but we also ensure they are high in healthy protein. Better, bananas and cottage cheese add moisture and fluffy texture to the pancakes, which means these protein pancakes have none of the grainy, dry texture that comes with adding protein powder. Moist, fluffy, and perfectly sweet, these pancakes are the best way to have your cake ... and eat it too.

Like any pancake recipe, you'll need flour, baking powder, eggs, and vanilla. From there, you'll also need 2 overripe bananas (the more ripe, the sweeter the pancakes, so you'll want them spotted with brown) and butter for coating the pan. To add protein, grab cottage cheese and almond milk, looking for a whole milk cottage cheese with a smooth curd for the best results.

Combine the flour and baking powder in a small bowl.

In a large bowl, mash the banana into a paste-like consistency.

Beat the banana, cottage cheese, and eggs together until smooth.

Whisk in the milk and vanilla.

Fold in the dry ingredients until the batter is combined, but lumpy. Do not overmix.

Melt the 2 tablespoons of butter in a nonstick skillet over medium heat.

Scoop the pancake batter into the skillet to form a pancake. Cook until it's bubbling on the edges, then flip and cook until browned on both sides.

Repeat with the remaining batter.

Serve the pancakes with nuts and bananas, if desired.

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With the addition of cottage cheese, these pancakes amount to between 5 and 6 grams of protein per pancake, totaling about 12 grams of protein per serving. Being that pancakes are usually a carb-heavy food with low amounts of protein, 12 grams per serving is pretty good — and even better, in our recipe, the protein comes from real ingredients rather than any supplements or powders. Better, if you top the pancakes with nuts like walnuts as recommended, you can add a few more grams of protein to each serving.

That's not to say that you can't add protein powder to the pancakes for an even higher amount of protein per serving. The amount of protein you want to add depends on the type of protein powder used; typically, one scoop is anywhere between 20 and 40 grams, which can add up to 10 grams per serving. If protein powder isn't your thing but you're still looking for ways to add protein, try swapping the all-purpose flour for almond flour or swapping one egg for a half cup of Greek yogurt.

I've always found pancakes to be a challenging and messy food to cook, especially with a batter like this one, which is lumpy with cottage cheese curds. The most common way to scoop pancakes into the skillet is usually by using a measuring cup, which can scoop and pour relatively easily, and also makes it easy to measure the pancakes to around the same size. Still, though, it has never been my favorite way to pour pancakes, and there are a few ways I think are cleaner and more efficient.

My favorite way to scoop pancakes into the skillet is with a large cookie scoop, which drops a circle of batter directly onto the skillet in almost the exact size and shape of a perfect pancake. My second favorite way to scoop pancake batter isn't scooping at all — but rather, involves squeezing the batter out of a squeeze bottle, which cleanly drops the batter onto the skillet without dripping at all. With cottage cheese pancakes, which have large curds, you'll want to use a squeeze bottle with a large opening — which you can cut yourself using scissors if it's a bottle you don't mind altering, especially since we think you'll be wanting to make more of these pancakes in the future.

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