Happy Tuesday! I have to say, breakfast is a pretty important meal - and I don't just mean for fuel or 'breaking the fast' and getting your metabolism moving for the day ahead, but also because it can really cheer me up. I get affected by bad dreams rather stupidly; even if I can't remember them, if I've had a bad dream, I'll be in a bad mood all morning. Not angry, necessarily, but sometimes sad, unsettled, tense or jumpy. And I'm never quite sure why. I'm in one such mood today.
But a nice breakfast can calm me down and get me off to a better start, and after seeing so many 'unicorn' smoothies, I wanted to try something myself. Which wasn't hard, since anything can be made 'unicorn' by adding some pastel colours, and unicorn in particular favours pastel blue and pink. Which creates a problem, doesn't it? Blue is easy with artificial colouring, but if you're looking to stay healthy and join the 'unicorn' craze, you're a bit stuck. Right?
Wrong.
It took some research, but the secret ingredient is butterfly pea flowers. This intense blue flower has been used in Southeast Asian cooking for a very long time, and is also consumed as a tea. You can get it powdered in the west, but it's not that common, and trends for about £2.50 for 10g on Ebay. But that's enough. I generally use 1/4 teaspoon when I use it and it's more than enough. It's also very dark - I was a bit concerned that I'd gotten some rubbish and that perhaps it was only a specific variety that was so blue, because mine was inky as a powder, but once added to my eggs (yes, my eggs, all kinds of things wind up in my eggs) it turned wonderfully pastel.
Anyway. Unicorn breakfast pancakes. Or breakfast 'pizza'. It's clean, oh so healthy, and so very easy! A simple, giant pancake topped with yogurt coloured with butterfly pea flower and a crushed raspberry, topped with blueberries and raspberries and a few yogurt flours (drawn in yogurt and frozen).
I always use Flapjacked's protein pancake mix because you just add water, a single serving is 200 calories (which is easy to half, since it's 1/2 cup mix to 1.3 cup water), 20g of protein, they're made from oat flour and nothing artificial at all. Plus they make great pancakes, and great cakes! Sometimes I'll just spoon the batter into mini cupcake moulds, press a strawberry into each, add a sprinkle of baobab on top and bake at gas mark 4 for 10 minutes. Divine. You can get Flapjacked's protein pancake mixes through Protein Pick & Mix under snacks > breakfast > pancakes.
I usually use the buttermilk base because it's totally neutral. It's not sweet in the slightest as there's also no added sugar, but a few drops of vanilla can change that, as can the simple addition of fruit, so I usually add a few berries into the batter. I didn't do that with my unicorn pancake pizza, though.
I also used Yeo Valley's honey greek yogurt as a top, because it's probably my favourite yogurt ever. I used to buy big tubs when I was a fatty and eat the whole thing, or bake some chocolate cakes and eat them with cold honey yogurt. So freaking good! And because Yeo Valley is so clean - greek, organic, bio live yogurt - I've never had to say goodbye!
And if you're wondering, I did buy the flower powder through Ebay. I haven't yet found a more reliable source in the UK.
Ingredients:
makes 2 unicorn pancakes
pancake mix (I used 1 serving of flapjacked protein pancake mix)
1 pot of yogurt (I used a 100g pot of Yeo Valley Greek with honey)
handful of blueberries
handful of raspberries
1/2 teaspoon butterfly pea flower
Note: I only made one pancake, so I used half of a serving of pancake mix and half of a pot of yogurt.
Method:
1. Make your pancake mix and prepare your pancake. I actually oven-baked mine by lining a cookie sheet with greaseproof paper and spreading my batter over that, and cooking it for 10 minutes at 180 C/350 F/gas mark 4. It was personal preference.
2. Divide your batter in half and make your two giant pancakes.
3. Set them aside to cool a little and mix up the yogurt. Split the pot in half and add 1/2 teaspoon of butterfly pea flower to one half (unless you'd like more blue than pink, then add more yogurt) and 2 raspberries to the other, smoosh and mix.
4. Spread your yogurt, as desired, over the pancakes, then top with fruit and any decorative bits - shavings of organic white chocolate like Green & Black's, chia seeds, dragon fruit/pitaya. Whatever strikes your fancy. I drew some flowers with yogurt onto baking paper and froze them. They melted very quickly - I managed to get 2 off before they got too soft, but they firmed up again quickly enough. Just have to work quickly with them!
But a nice breakfast can calm me down and get me off to a better start, and after seeing so many 'unicorn' smoothies, I wanted to try something myself. Which wasn't hard, since anything can be made 'unicorn' by adding some pastel colours, and unicorn in particular favours pastel blue and pink. Which creates a problem, doesn't it? Blue is easy with artificial colouring, but if you're looking to stay healthy and join the 'unicorn' craze, you're a bit stuck. Right?
Wrong.
It took some research, but the secret ingredient is butterfly pea flowers. This intense blue flower has been used in Southeast Asian cooking for a very long time, and is also consumed as a tea. You can get it powdered in the west, but it's not that common, and trends for about £2.50 for 10g on Ebay. But that's enough. I generally use 1/4 teaspoon when I use it and it's more than enough. It's also very dark - I was a bit concerned that I'd gotten some rubbish and that perhaps it was only a specific variety that was so blue, because mine was inky as a powder, but once added to my eggs (yes, my eggs, all kinds of things wind up in my eggs) it turned wonderfully pastel.
Anyway. Unicorn breakfast pancakes. Or breakfast 'pizza'. It's clean, oh so healthy, and so very easy! A simple, giant pancake topped with yogurt coloured with butterfly pea flower and a crushed raspberry, topped with blueberries and raspberries and a few yogurt flours (drawn in yogurt and frozen).
I usually use the buttermilk base because it's totally neutral. It's not sweet in the slightest as there's also no added sugar, but a few drops of vanilla can change that, as can the simple addition of fruit, so I usually add a few berries into the batter. I didn't do that with my unicorn pancake pizza, though.
I also used Yeo Valley's honey greek yogurt as a top, because it's probably my favourite yogurt ever. I used to buy big tubs when I was a fatty and eat the whole thing, or bake some chocolate cakes and eat them with cold honey yogurt. So freaking good! And because Yeo Valley is so clean - greek, organic, bio live yogurt - I've never had to say goodbye!
And if you're wondering, I did buy the flower powder through Ebay. I haven't yet found a more reliable source in the UK.
Ingredients:
makes 2 unicorn pancakes
pancake mix (I used 1 serving of flapjacked protein pancake mix)
1 pot of yogurt (I used a 100g pot of Yeo Valley Greek with honey)
handful of blueberries
handful of raspberries
1/2 teaspoon butterfly pea flower
Note: I only made one pancake, so I used half of a serving of pancake mix and half of a pot of yogurt.
Method:
1. Make your pancake mix and prepare your pancake. I actually oven-baked mine by lining a cookie sheet with greaseproof paper and spreading my batter over that, and cooking it for 10 minutes at 180 C/350 F/gas mark 4. It was personal preference.
2. Divide your batter in half and make your two giant pancakes.
3. Set them aside to cool a little and mix up the yogurt. Split the pot in half and add 1/2 teaspoon of butterfly pea flower to one half (unless you'd like more blue than pink, then add more yogurt) and 2 raspberries to the other, smoosh and mix.
Note: the butterfly pea flower will seem a bit gritty, so leave it to stand for a minute then mix it again,
then another minute and mix it again. This allows the colour to smooth and intensify.
4. Spread your yogurt, as desired, over the pancakes, then top with fruit and any decorative bits - shavings of organic white chocolate like Green & Black's, chia seeds, dragon fruit/pitaya. Whatever strikes your fancy. I drew some flowers with yogurt onto baking paper and froze them. They melted very quickly - I managed to get 2 off before they got too soft, but they firmed up again quickly enough. Just have to work quickly with them!
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