Teff Pancakes

These were an effort one, to change up the Sunday morning routine of making (delicious) oatmeal pancakes, and two to make something I might be able to feed a non-gluten eating Marenka!
I'm not jumping up and down about the recipe as I made it, but it has definite possibilities. Normally, when I'm approaching an as yet untested recipe with an ingredient that's fairly new to me I take the time to find a number of similar recipes, picking and choosing elements of several to come up with something that might best suit our tastes. This time I just opened up a cookbook and made the recipe inside, for better or worse.
The flavor was really nice, but they were a little on the dense side. The batter thickened considerably as it sat and even though the recipe said to add more water if this happened, I didn't. Changes I'll make next time are whizzing the milk/water, teff, and a couple eggs in a blender first. I also found several recipes that called for adding 2 Tbs of flaxmeal too, so I might throw that in. One recipe I found added a banana to the blender, another just folded in banana slices to the batter. All in all, a lot of little tweaks.

I tried using teff flour before to make a passable injera a few weeks back. I think it just hadn't sat on the counter long enough. I went almost 2 days, but that really wasn't enough to get a good sourdough going. It was edible, but not really worth posting. Attempting an all-teff recipe did open my eyes to the reason most injera recipes often add a glutenous wheat flour to the teff, as our injera had a tendency to crack like a seared desert floor when they cooked. I might try again sometime, but in the meantime we'll continue to appreciate the ones we get at Aster's, our favorite Ethiopian joint. :-)

The below recipe comes out of Bob's Red Mill Baking Book, and I've altered it by adding cinnamon, vanilla, and using soymilk in lieu of regular milk. There aren't any eggs in it, and you could easily veganize this by swapping out the butter for oil. I'll type as written, but I only made 3/4 of the recipe.

I ate mine topped with Fage Greek yogurt, agave nectar, bananas and walnuts.

Teff Pancakes:
(Bob's Redmill Baking Book)

2 cups teff flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
(1/2 tsp cinnamon)
2 Tbs sugar (I used Sucanat)
2 cups of water, or 1 cup water and 1 cup milk (I used half soy milk and half water...add more liquid if it thickens too much when sitting.)
2 Tbs cooled melted butter, or canola oil
1 tsp vanilla

Whisk or sift together dry ingredients.
Whisk melted butter or oil into water/milk (and vanilla if you like).
Continue to mix in the dry ingredients into the wet.
The batter may thicken upon sitting at which point you can add a bit more water.
Laddle 1/4-1/3 cup of batter for each cake and cook for 3-4 minutes, or until bubbles appear.
Flip and cook on other side til done.

For fun...one of the Meyer Special lemons from one of Monster's co-workers tree. Who knew you could grow this kind of goodness right here in Austin?? It's sitting next to what was billed as a large Naval for size comp. Believe it or not, it's all lemon, not taken up by 1/2 pith on the inside. :-)