Double Chocolate Pancakes

What makes a pancake a pancake and thus not a flapjack? To answer this most divisive of questions, I turned to the most obvious source of validation in the 21st century – instagram. For what is collective social definition if not a hashtag?

A quick search reveals that flapjacks have a rather mediocre 73 000 hashtags attached to their presence, while pancakes smash through the red ribbon with a blazing 4 800 000.

Right then, pancakes it is (even if I secretly call them flapjacks, because no decently raised South African would infer that anything other than a crepe with cinnamon, lemon juice and sugar is in fact a pancake).

These pancakes (oh but it pains me…flapcakes?) are the result of one of my usual recipes with a few odds and ends thrown in but what makes them double chocolate is the sauce, unashamedly cribbed from some wonderful health instagrammer whose handle I conveniently can’t remember. Shout out to the mystery person for a cracking chocolate dripping.

These are great as a healthy-ish dinner party dessert (ish because they’re not light in calories), but they’re actually even better as a decadent Saturday breakfast. However you enjoy them, note that this makes enough batter for 2 batches of 4 big guys, so try to restrain yourself from cooking it all up at once.

Double Chocolate Pancakes

Ingredients:

Pancakes

• 1/2 cup coconut flour
• 1 cup buckwheat flour (can sub with oat flour or other flour of choice)
• 1/4 cup cacao
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 chia egg (1 tbsp chia seeds soaked in 3-4 tbsp water for 10 minutes until a gel forms)
• 1 1/2 – 2 cups almond milk
• 2 tbsp agave or 2-3 tbsp coconut sugar
• 1 tbsp coconut oil
• 1 tbsp tahini

Chocolate Sauce

• 1 tbsp tahini
• 1-2 tbsp agave
• 3 tbsp coconut oil
• 2-3 tbsp cacao
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Sift the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk the wet ingredients excluding the chia egg. Add chia egg once combined.
3. Add wet to dry and stir til lump free.
4. Scoop into greased skillet and cook on one side til bubbles appear, then flip.
5. In the meantime, combine chocolate sauce ingredients – melt the coco oil and honey so they blend easily.
6. Pour chocolate sauce over pancakes and garnish with any combination of fresh fruit, nuts, seeds and whipped coconut cream.