Ideal for EatingEating ethically while eating great!

Oh, my goodness. Isa Chandra Moskowitz is a vegan goddess, and her "Perfect Pancakes" are manna from heaven.

I've got myriad pancake recipes, some award-worthy and some trash-worthy. When I was first vegan twenty years ago, I gave up on pancakes. I'm sorry, but they were all pretty much crap. And my kitchen chemistry skills as applied to baking just weren't strong enough to invent my own vegalicious pancake recipe.

Thank heaven for Isa's "Perfect Pancakes"!

My favorite pancake recipe of any kind has been "Ruth's Pancakes" from the Gourmet Cookbook (Ruth Reichl, editor). She uses an entire stick of butter in the batter. The pancakes are so light, fluffy and buttery that you almost don't want to add any toppings to them.

I also have a gluten-free, dairy-free (GFCF*) recipe that uses coconut flour, coconut oil and coconut milk, but it also calls for eggs. It is delicious, especially for being gluten-free. But it's not vegan. I'll have to play around with replacing the eggs with something vegan.

Then I've got GFCF vegan recipes that are super nutty. But they lack the fluffiness I want in a pancake.

Of course, I've got plenty of vegan recipes that call for tofu. That's fine, and I'm sure I'll do some with tofu again one day. But, honestly, I get sick and tired of every vegan cook automatically replacing dairy and eggs with tofu. It's too easy, it's not overly creative, it doesn't always taste fabulous, and we eat too damn much soy as it is to be throwing into all our baked goods, as well.

Rant over. I love tofu. I really do. But we do eat too much (unfermented) soy. 

Anyway, I just bought Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. One of the reasons I chose it was because she doesn't throw tofu into her baked goods or sauces. She hasn't adapted old, standard vegan recipes that rely on soy. She has truly created new vegan recipes, the results of which can stand up to any non-vegan recipe any day. Honestly, as good as these recipes are, it makes me that much more frustrated that more restaurants and bakeries don't have vegan offerings. There really is no excuse.

Apparently, the "Perfect Pancakes" recipe was originally printed in Vegan with a Vengeance (by Moskowitz). I don't have it yet, but I will have to add it to my library forthwith.

I recommend you buy Isa's books, if you don't already have them. In the meantime, you can find her "Perfect Pancakes" recipe here. She makes the 1 teaspoon of cinnamon optional. Personally, I think the cinnamon is key. The recipe calls for 1 to 1 1/4 cups non-dairy milk. I used 1 cup of almond milk, and my batter was plenty wet.

I served my pancakes with maple syrup (warmed a bit) and whipped cashew cream. (When don't I use cashew cream?)

Enjoy the pancakes! I'm going to start thinking about dinner now.

* "Gluten-free, dairy-free" is usually referred to as GFCF. The C in GFCF stands for casein, which is the main protein in cow's milk.