Brainless Banana Pancakes from How It All Vegan (& Expert Pancake Advice)

One of our go-to recipes at home is Brainless Banana Pancakes from How It All Vegan, the first book that made us really love cooking years ago. We have the other 2 books in the series, but this one, Sarah and Tanya's first, has been so well-loved for so long that it's completely falling apart now…time to order the anniversary edition this week for sure.

We figured that this was the recipe to use when we were on pancake duty at our goddaughter's 3rd birthday celebration with her family earlier this month. Frankly, pancakes aren't usually our very best friend. I mean, we can manage to make a couple of pretty ones for one of us, but the other poor soul eats the crumpled, slightly burned ones.

We needed help, so we got some tips on making a whole bunch of pancakes and having them turn out well from our friend Melissa Peterson, who is very knowledgeable and trustworthy on a wide range of subjects. Her advice via text message: make 1 1/4 pancakes per person; keep the griddle well oiled;  keep the heat to medium; only pour once per cake; when edges are dull and the bubbles start to pop, it's time to flip; and only flip them once, otherwise they'll be tough. This straightforward, stellar advice worked perfectly.

One last suggestion she gave after admitting how nervous we were to cook for a bunch of children: "Make faces with mini chocolate chips in the pancakes!" She said, "You'll be a hero."  Our banana chocolate chip smiley-face pancakes turned out to be a surefire hit with the  6-and-under set. Cooking for kids is really fun and certainly educational for folks like us who don't have any of our own. It seems like a huge compliment when little one love what you made; they seem to be pretty tough critics.

Later, we got a little obsessed with perfecting our chocolate-chip-smiley-face technique at home in order to use up the rest of the batter. We ended up giving two of our nephews 20 little pancakes to look forward to now for their upcoming breakfasts. Whether you have a bunch of kids running around the house or not, you've got to try Brainless Banana Pancakes for breakfast soon!