The dehydrator is useful for much more than making dried fruit chips for a snack or dehydrating onions, 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 that the air dehydrator offers you, and of course I hope that with them you enjoy some of the healthiest, most energetic and tasty breakfasts.
Preparing this crepe batter takes just two minutes (if not less), and the dehydrator will do all the work.
Making fruit pancakes is an easy task: put the ingredients you are going to make the pancakes with in a blender or food processor, pour the resulting mixture onto the dehydrator trays and dry. Nothing else, let's see!
What ingredients to use to make healthy dehydrated pancakes or crepes
Today we are making these pancakes with just banana (I'll leave you the recipe below), personally it is one of the fruits that I use the most to make pancakes because it provides energy, sweetness (so I don't have to add extra sugar) and you get a fairly dense texture, which allows you to form the crepes without difficulty, since it doesn't drain, it keeps its shape.
But apart from using banana as a base for making the dough, you can make the pancakes with:
- With fruit , from apple to cherries, banana, pear, blueberries, figs..., or mix several of them. Don't forget coconut, or dehydrated coconut that we always have on hand if that suits you better.
- With nuts , which mixed with fruit will provide energy, essential oils for the body and wonderful flavours. From walnuts or hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, or raisins, dates... Add your favourite nuts to blend them with the fruit and obtain the base for your pancakes.
- You can certainly add cereals , from oat flakes to chia, flax seeds, etc.
Remember that you can add honey, maple syrup or sugar to your mixes (without overdoing it or without it, since the fruit is already sweet on its own), but using banana and dates in your recipes ensures an important contribution of sweetness in the most 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 dough on the trays of the dehydrator, on baking paper and making sure the air circulates. Leave the dehydrator to 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 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 healthy and guilt-free dessert.
Keep in mind that depending on the ingredients you use, you will get a more or less dense batter. If it is dense, you can make pancakes (apply thicker layers), and if it is a more liquid batter, the result will be more like a crepe, like the ones I bring you in today's recipe.
If you prefer, or on the day you want a really crunchy snack or if you want to decorate your dishes, you can make very thin slices to obtain thin, crunchy slices and decorate your meat and fish dishes, salads... or leave on the table to snack on with a spreadable cheese or hummus.
Remember also that the WMF dehydrator comes with a bar mould, precisely to make the most of the dehydrator's possibilities: you can make fruit and muesli bars or whatever you fancy: mix, pour into the mould and put it in the dehydrator to dry.
Recipe for making dehydrated banana and cocoa pancakes
Ingredients
For the crepes:
- 5 or 6 ripe bananas
- 2 heaping tablespoons of pure cocoa*
*If you use pure quality cocoa and you 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 for the first pancakes you make, so as not to use too much cocoa in the crepe.
To accompany:
To accompany these banana and cocoa crepes, I suggest several options, although I'm sure you'll have other delicious suggestions:
- Banana slices and maple syrup: The final 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 create 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 or your favorite flavor jam.
- Dried fruit, such as chopped hazelnuts or almonds, together with fruit, jam or icing sugar.
Preparation
- Peel the bananas, cut them into thick pieces and put them in the Magimix blender .
- Add the tablespoons of cocoa powder.
- Blend for one minute and remove.
- Prepare the trays of your WMF air dehydrator with baking paper, and place a generous spoonful on each tray. Using a spatula, spread the dough into a thin circular shape, about a millimetre thick. Fill all the trays, place them in the dehydrator and set to 70°C for 2 hours, then lower to 50°C for 5 hours.
- Ideally, rotate the trays from time to time to ensure that they dry at the same time (normally this wouldn't be necessary, but when applying the baking paper it's better to move them around in case the air isn't evenly distributed... although you'll see that all the crepes will dehydrate anyway and the house will smell fabulously good).
- When serving, remove the crepes from the trays and serve on a plate with your favorite accompaniment.
- Any leftover crepes can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
If you don't have a food dehydrator yet, you'll see that it's a very simple device. You just have to control the temperature and time you want the hot air to circulate to dry the food, and press the power button. Practice makes perfect, but remember that the dehydrator already comes with instructions and a guide to ideal times and temperatures for using it, but you'll see that after very few uses you won't even need it.
I hope you are encouraged to try making these crepes and explore the world of dehydrated pancakes. They are a very healthy, tasty, practical and endless resource.
