Half a batch of these went into the freezer on Sunday and by Wednesday morning they were gone, toasted straight from frozen while I was hunting for a missing hair tie and my daughter’s shin pads. That’s the whole test for a breakfast recipe in my house. Does it survive a Tuesday night when nobody’s organised and everyone’s starving.
Buckwheat and banana pancakes pass. They’re not trying to be a health food gimmick, they’re just a pancake that happens to have more going for it than the packet mix, and they hold together well enough to freeze, reheat and shove in a lunchbox without going gluey.
Why buckwheat earns its place on the plate
Despite the name, buckwheat isn’t wheat at all, it’s a seed related to rhubarb, which is handy if you’ve got a coeliac mate coming for breakfast or a kid who reacts to gluten. It’s got a nutty, slightly earthy flavour and it brings a decent amount of fibre and resistant starch to the mix, which is part of why these pancakes keep you fuller for longer than the white-flour version. The Australian Dietary Guidelines point to wholegrains as one of the easiest upgrades most families can make without a total kitchen overhaul, and buckwheat flour is about as easy a swap as there is. You use it cup for cup in most pancake batters.
I’ll be honest, buckwheat flour alone makes a pancake that’s a bit dense and a bit sad. Mashed banana and a splash of milk fix that completely, and the banana means you can go easy on the sweetener, sometimes skip it altogether.
The recipe
This is the batter I make on a Sunday afternoon while something else is in the oven. It takes about fifteen minutes to mix and twenty to cook the lot, and it doubles well for lunchboxes if you’ve got a footy or netball carnival on the weekend, which in our house is most weekends from April to September.
Ingredients
- 2 ripe bananas, mashed well
- 2 eggs
- 250ml milk (dairy or oat both work)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 150g buckwheat flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- Pinch of salt
- 1 tablespoon melted butter or light olive oil, plus extra for the pan
- To serve: extra sliced banana, plain Greek yoghurt, a scrape of honey or a handful of frozen berries, warmed
Method
- In a large bowl, mash the bananas until fairly smooth, a few lumps are fine.
- Whisk in the eggs, milk and vanilla until combined.
- In a separate bowl, mix the buckwheat flour, baking powder, bicarb, cinnamon and salt.
- Tip the dry ingredients into the wet and stir until just combined. Don’t overmix, a few lumps mean lighter pancakes. Stir through the melted butter last.
- Rest the batter for five minutes while your pan heats over medium heat. This isn’t fussy, it just lets the buckwheat flour hydrate properly so the pancakes hold together when you flip them.
- Grease the pan lightly and drop in quarter-cup portions of batter. Cook for two to three minutes until bubbles appear across the surface and the edges look set, then flip and cook another two minutes.
- Repeat with the remaining batter, wiping and re-greasing the pan between batches as needed.
- Serve warm with yoghurt, extra banana and a small drizzle of honey, or stack and cool completely before freezing.
Serves 4 (makes about 12 small pancakes).
What actually happens on a school morning
Cold from the fridge these are fine but a bit flat. Frozen and reheated in the toaster on a low setting, or five minutes in a 160C oven, they come back properly, edges a bit crisp, centre still soft. I stack them with baking paper between each one before freezing, otherwise you end up chiselling a pancake brick out of a snap-lock bag at 7am, which nobody needs.
My youngest won’t touch anything with visible banana bits, so I mash extra thoroughly for her batch, or occasionally blitz the whole wet mixture in the blender if I’m feeling like the smooth-texture police that morning. My eldest wants hers with berries and a squeeze of lemon, which is a strange combination but I’ve stopped fighting it.
A serving idea for the weekend version
On a Saturday, once netball training’s done and everyone’s home by nine, I’ll do a bigger stack of these with warmed frozen berries, a proper dollop of yoghurt and toasted flaked almonds on top. It stops being a grab-and-go breakfast and becomes something closer to what we do for the slower weekend meals around here, a bit more considered, everyone at the table at the same time for once.
If you want a savoury detour from the sweet stuff, our herb and kale omelette uses a similar make-ahead logic, just cooked in a slab and cut into portions.
A variation worth trying
Swap half the banana for grated apple and add a teaspoon of nutmeg instead of cinnamon, it reads a bit more autumnal and works nicely alongside the ideas in warming autumn meals that still feel light. You can also fold through a tablespoon of chia seeds for extra fibre, though I’d argue that’s gilding the lily a bit, the banana and buckwheat are already doing the job on their own.
Where this fits into the week
I’m not precious about breakfast being some perfectly balanced production every single day. Most mornings in our house are triage. But having something in the freezer that’s genuinely wholesome, that doesn’t rely on a packet mix loaded with refined flour and sugar, takes the pressure off. Better Health Victoria’s guidance on fibre intake is a good reminder that most of us, kids included, aren’t getting enough of it through the day, and breakfast is often the easiest meal to fix that in without anyone noticing.
If mornings are a genuine sticking point in your house, not just the food but the whole routine, it might be worth reading building a morning routine that actually sticks, which goes into some of the non-food stuff that makes breakfast easier or harder depending on how the rest of the morning’s set up.
These pancakes aren’t going to fix a chaotic Tuesday on their own. But they’ll survive one, and some weeks that’s the whole win.
— Nicole Barnes, Golden Door Living kitchen
