Banana and cocoa pancakes (and how to make crepes with a dehydrator)
The dehydrator is useful for much more than making dehydrated fruit chips for a snack or dehydrating onion, garlic, mushrooms and aromatic plants to always have them ready for your stews. With this recipe for dehydrated banana and cocoa crepes I hope to shed light on the possibilities offered by the air dehydrator, and of course I hope that with them you will enjoy the healthiest, most energetic and tasty breakfasts.
Preparing this crepe batter takes you two minutes (if not less), and the dehydrator will do all the work.
Making fruit pancakes is an easy task: you introduce the ingredients with which you are going to make the pancakes in a blender or a food processor, apply the resulting mass on the dehydrator trays and dry. Nothing else, let's see it!
With what ingredients to make dehydrated and healthy pancakes or crepes
Today we make these pancakes only with banana (I'll leave you the recipe below), personally it's one of the fruits I use the most to make pancakes because it provides energy, sweetness (so I don't have to add additional sugar) and you get a fairly dense texture, which allows you to form the crepes without difficulty, since it does not slip, it maintains its shape.
But apart from using banana as a base to make the dough, you can make the pancakes with:
- With fruits , from apple to cherries, banana, pear, blueberries, figs..., or mix several of them. Do not forget the coconut, or the dehydrated coconut that we always have so close at hand if it suits you better.
- With nuts , which mixed with the fruit will provide energy, basic oils for the body and the most wonderful flavors. From walnuts or hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, or raisins, dates... Add your favorite nuts to crush them with the fruit and obtain the base of your pancakes.
- Without a doubt, you can add cereals , from oat flakes to chia, flax seeds, etc.
Remember that you can add honey, maple syrup or sugar to your mixtures (without exceeding or without it, since the fruit is already sweet in itself), but using banana and dates in your recipes ensures a significant contribution of sweetness and the more natural and healthy way.
How to make dehydrated crepes or pancakes
The idea is as simple as blending the ingredients with a blender or food processor and spreading the resulting mass on the dehydrator trays, on baking paper, ensuring that the air circulates. You let the dehydrator work for a few hours.
As a result, you get a kind of crepes or pancakes that will be more or less elastic depending on the thickness and drying time that you wanted to make them, and I assure you that they are the most ideal for breakfast, for a snack or to surprise with a Guilt-Free Healthy Dessert
Keep in mind that depending on the ingredients you use, you will get a more or less dense dough. If it is dense, you can make pancakes (apply thicker layers), and if it is a more liquid dough, the result will be more like a crepe, like the ones I bring you in today's recipe.
If you prefer, or the day you want a crunchy snack or if you want to make some decorations for your dishes, you can make very thin sheets, to obtain thin and crunchy sheets and decorate your meat and fish dishes, salads... or leave it on the table to snack on with a spreadable cheese or hummus.
Also remember that the WMF dehydrator comes with a bar mold, precisely to take full advantage of the possibilities of the dehydrator: you can make fruit and muesli bars or whatever you fancy: mix, apply in the mold and put it in the dehydrator to dry out
Recipe to make dehydrated banana and cocoa pancakes
Ingredients
For the crepes:
- 5 or 6 ripe bananas
- 2 heaping tablespoons of pure cocoa*
*If you have quality pure cocoa and apply two or three very full tablespoons, you will get a very intense cocoa flavor. If you use pure cocoa, I recommend that you apply two level tablespoons of cocoa to the first pancakes you make, so as not to exceed its intensity in the crepe.
To accompany:
To accompany these banana and cocoa crepes, I propose several options, although I am sure that you will have other delicious proposals:
- Banana Slices and Maple Syrup – The end result of the pancakes is already sweet considering the banana base, but ideal for banana lovers.
- Banana slices and raspberry syrup or liquid chocolate: You can reduce the sweetness by adding more cocoa to the mixture, or instead of honey or maple syrup, accompany the pancakes with syrups that generate a greater contrast than honey and that do not sweeten them as much, such as raspberry syrup, apricot jam or intense liquid cocoa.
- Raspberries or cherries and icing sugar
- Orange, raspberry, peach jam or your favorite flavor.
- Nuts, such as hazelnuts or chopped almonds, along with fruit, jam or icing sugar.
Preparation
- Peel the bananas, cut them thick and put them in the Magimix blender .
- Add the tablespoons of cocoa powder.
- Crush for a minute and remove.
- Prepare the trays of the WMF air dryer with baking paper, and apply a generous spoonful on each tray. With a spatula, spread the dough in a circular and thin shape, one millimeter thick. Fill all the trays, place them in the dehydrator and program 70 ºC for 2 hours, and then lower to 50 ºC for 5 hours.
- Ideally, turn the trays from time to time, to ensure that they dry evenly (normally it would not be necessary, but when applying the baking paper it will be better to move them in case there is not a homogeneous distribution of air... although you will see that it still all the crepes are dehydrating and the house smells fabulously good).
- When it's time to serve, remove the crepes from the trays and serve on a plate with your favorite side.
- Leftover crepes can be stored in the fridge in an airtight container.
If you don't have a food dehydrator yet, you'll find that it's a very simple device. You only have to control the temperature and time that you want the hot air to circulate that will dry the food, and press the start button. Practice makes perfect, but remember that the dehydrator already comes with instructions and a guide for ideal times and temperatures to use it, but you will see that in very few uses you won't even need it).
I hope you will be encouraged to try making these crepes and explore the world of dehydrated pancakes. They are a most healthy, tasty, practical and infinite resource.
