Kale pancakes

These pancakes are naturally vegan. You can eat them as savory or sweet. The batter is super easy to make in a blender. These pancakes are an easy way to add greens to your diet. They are delicious as lunch, dinner, or even as dessert.

My pancakes were filled with muhammara red pepper spread, avocado, lettuce, and pulled oats.

Pulled oats are a vegan fake meat product of gold and green foods in Finland. In the Us, it is sold as Sysco, simply plant-based protein. You can order it here if you like to try it out. (not sponsored)

Since I live in Finland, we get it in every store and use it in many vegan recipes. My favorite one with the pulled oats is to mix it with barbeque sauce and eat it as a burger together with coleslaw.

Ingredients for savory pancakes

For these kale pancakes, you need:

• Kale. You can use green or red kale. In the picture, I have red kale leaves. Instead of kale, you can use spinach.
• Flour. In this recipe for savory pancakes, whole grain wheat flour is a good and fiber-rich option. You can replace some of the flour with oat flour or chickpea flour if you want to. I think you can use only those flours for a gluten-free version, but I have not tried how well they hold together. A teaspoon of psyllium is good to add if you try to make gluten-free ones.
• Plant milk. I used oat milk, but other kinds of plant milk work well also.
• Spices. Garlic powder and dried herbs go well with the savory version. Add also just a pinch of salt.

What to serve with savory kale pancakes?

Try out savory fillings and eat these pancakes as savory big crepes or blini style as small pancakes.

• Muhammara red pepper spread, add some other filling also like avocado, onion. Some Tex Mex spiced vegan meat goes well with this.
• Vegan Skagen
• Carrot lox with vegan remoulade sauce
• Russian blini style with; seaweed caviar, vegan mayo, and chopped red onion

If you want to make sweet kale pancakes

Instead of all flour being whole grain, use all or half as normal flour since whole grain has a different taste.

As spices, don't add herbs or garlic. Some vanilla powder is good. Also, 1 teaspoon cardamom can be added.

If you want sweet pancakes, also add 1-2 tablespoons of sugar or maple syrup to the batter.

What to serve with sweet ones

• Jam
• Fresh berries
• Maple syrup
• Whipped plant-based cream
• Ice cream
• Nicecream from bananas
• Nut butter
• Fruits

Equipment

You need a good frying pan. I often use Teflon since you don't need so much oil for frying. I have a crepe pan in the picture, but making the pancakes this big was a bit hard, they broke down. Just a bit smaller was fine to fry.

You can also use a mini pan to make small pancakes, kids love these.

A soup scoop was very handy when rationing out perfect-sized pancakes.

This is how you make kale pancakes

Remove the stem part from the kale leaves and wash them also thoroughly.

Put all your ingredients in a blender and make a smooth batter.

If you don't have a blender, then you can use a hand mixer. The most important thing is that you make the kale finely chopped. Other ingredients can be mixed just with a regular whisk also.

Fry the pancakes at medium heat. Add 1-2 teaspoon of oil. Rapeseed oil, coconut oil, sunflower oil, or some other heat-tolerant oil to the pan before pouring the batter.

If the batter feels too thick you can add some more plant milk to it.

Turn the pancake when it starts to look firm on the surface and has some color on the other side.

These color pancakes as the picture below are quite optimal. Don´t fry them too brown, since they get carcinogens then.

Nutrition content

Kale has a good amount of vitamin C. Also a good source of fiber, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, zink, A-E, and B vitamins.

One big pancake has 6,2 grams of fiber, 31 g carbs, 6,1 grams of protein, and only 180 calories.

📖 Recipe