Egg abstainers, your breakfast prayers have been answered. Serious Eats has developed an egg-free (actually, completely vegan) recipe for thick, fluffy pancakes, and the secret is in a can of chickpeas.
Photos by J. Kenji López-Alt.
As J. Kenji Lopez-Alt explains over at The Food Lab, chickpea liquid, also called “aquafaba”, has the ability to fluff up and stabilise all kinds of egg-free goodies, from meringues to muffins, but it’s not simply a matter of dumping in some chickpea liquid and calling it a day. In typical Food Lab style, Kenji tinkered around with his basic pancake recipe until he landed on a completely vegan recipe for fluffy stacks of warm, delicious pancakes.
Click the link below to read his whole process (and the recipe) but there are a few key things to keep in mind when making these, and other, egg-less wonders:
- Adding a little extra sugar increases the viscosity of the chickpea liquid, giving it more structural staying power.
- Rather than stirring aquafaba into the rest of your wet ingredients, whip it to fluffy stiff peaks on its own and then gently fold into your batter, being careful to not wreck the airy quality of the foam.
- Because aquafaba lacks the protein-setting properties of actual eggs, it takes a little more time for this batter firm up. To make sure they have enough time to dry out and cook throughout, use a lower heat setting than you would with “regular” pancakes.
Keep in mind that the above tips can (and should) be applied to any baking you do with aquafaba, so try them out on your next egg-free cake, cookie or muffin.
Use Aquafaba to Make Extra-Light, Fluffy Egg-Free or Vegan Pancakes [Serious Eats]
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