Name: Vegan Shamrock Pancakes
Ingredients: 1 cup rolled oats; 1 banana; 1 cup dairy free milk; 1 tbsp chia seeds; 1 tbsp ground flax seed; 1 tsp vanilla; 1 tsp cinnamon; 1 cup spinach; 1 tsp oil (for frying)

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Saint Patrick’s day is such a fun holiday to go all out on everything being green. Weather it’s wearing a green shirt, socks, or full on dressing up as a leprechaun, most people enjoy this holiday or at least participate to avoid getting pinched! From what I’ve experienced, most celebrations involve a lot of food, and St. Patrick’s day is no exception. From green smoothies or shakes to “green eggs and ham,” it’s a lot of fun to turn your food GREEN!

I personally don’t like to use a lot of food dyes unless they’re derived from natural food sources, and green eggs are definitely off the menu for us with our son’s egg allergy. So this St. Patrick’s season I’ve been wondering what yummy green food we could make. I attempted a green smoothie, and it honestly did not turn out very yummy, but then I remembered these blender pancakes I use to make about a year ago and totally forgot they existed. These were one of the first Vegan pancakes I tried and they were so delicious. I loved that they contained spinach because it was an easy way to get some greens in our diet, but you honestly can’t taste the spinach flavor at all! You can definitely see it though.

I decided these green blender pancakes were the perfect St. Patrick’s day breakfast for us and I wanted to get fancy. I used a plastic baggy to pipe the pancakes into shamrock shapes, I cut kiwi fruit into shamrock shapes with a little food cutout, and I even made some small circle pancakes that I brushed with edible gold luster dust to be like gold coins. One thing I didn’t have that would’ve put it over the top is some colorful fresh fruit and some vegan whipped cream to make a rainbow! There’s always next year for that I guess…

What Makes This Recipe So Great

Egg, Dairy, & Gluten Free: This recipe uses gluten free oats instead of flour, vegan milk, and instead of egg for a binder it uses ground flax and chia seeds.
Easy To Make: You literally throw all the ingredients into a blender and then pour it into a hot non-stick pan!
No Added Sugar: These pancakes are naturally sweetened with banana, and they actually turn out perfectly sweet.
They’re Fun: Whether these are just for you, or you’re making them for your kids, who doesn’t love colorful food, and they’re even more fun if you attempt to make shapes like shamrocks out of the pancakes!

Ingredients & How to Substitute

Oats – Make sure you use certified gluten-free oats if you need to avoid gluten. They can be rolled oats, quick cooking oats, steel cut oats – any style oats should work!
Banana – This sweetens the pancakes, if you can’t have banana, maybe try some apple-sauce, though I can’t guarantee it’ll turn out the same.
Vegan Milk – I use soy milk since soy isn’t one of our allergens, but any plant based milk you can have will work!
Chia Seeds & Flax Seed – Chia & flax seeds help bind the pancakes together, not to mention they’re extremely nutritious. If you can’t have flax, just use chia and vice versa. If you can’t do either, then just leave them out.
Vanilla – I use vanilla in so many recipes because it really adds such a good flavor!
Cinnamon – Again, it just adds so much flavor, but it’s optional if you have issues with cinnamon.
Spinach – This will give your pancakes their green color! The pancakes are still yummy without spinach, you could try a different leafy green if you still want them to be green and can’t do spinach and don’t want to use food coloring. Not to mention, adding this will give you some good veggies in your diet!
Oil – This is just for frying and you can use any oil you prefer. I like the flavor of coconut, but I recognize not everyone can eat coconut.

Some Recipe Tips

If your pancakes batter is too thick, add a bit more vegan milk. If it’s too runny, add some extra oats! You can’t really go wrong with this recipe. If you’re using a nonstick fry pan, you can even fry them with no oil and they still turn out great, the oil will make them more crispy and browned. If you want more green color to show through, don’t use the oil. Make sure you wait until the top of the pancake is no longer glossy before flipping. As it cooks, the wet look on top will dry out a little, giving it more of a matte look.

Sometimes I’ll make a huge batch of batter and keep the batter in my fridge and use it a few days in a row for breakfasts! So it’s great for a little meal prep.