Healthful Bites

Mmm…pancakes. For me, nothing says weekend brunch quite like a warm short stack! But if you’re not careful about what you include in the recipe and/or what you top them with, you might be setting yourself up for a not-so-fun sugar crash in a few hours.

A few examples:

• New York Cheesecake Pancakes from IHOP: 1,100 calories, 44 g fat, 56 g sugar
• Carrot Cake Pancakes from First Watch: 740 calories, 30 g fat, 51 g sugar
• Strawberry Bliss Pancakes from Perkins: 940 calories, 29 g fat, 72 g sugar (almost 6 tablespoons of sugar!)

And that’s not even counting any butter or syrup for toppings. Luckily, there are also several more sensible options available at restaurants including:

• Hearty Wheat Pancakes from Denny’s: 310 calories, 1.5 g fat, 4 g sugar
• Multigrain Pancakes from First Watch: 430 calories, 21 g fat, 14 g sugar
• Buttermilk Pancakes Short Stack from Perkins: 410 calories, 15 g fat, 12 g sugar

You’ll have even more luck packing in nutrition if you whip up your pancakes at home. Here’s a recipe that I recently tried and loved (and kept me full for hours) from the kitchen whiz Kath Eats.

Satisfying Oatmeal Pancake, from Kath Eats (with very minor tweaks)

• 1/3 cup old fashioned oats
• 1/3 cup egg substitute
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon stevia, sugar (brown or white) or sweetener of choice
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl.

Heat the stove burner to medium and pour mixture into a round shape on a pan coated with non-stick spray. See the bubbles in the second picture above? That’s how you know it’s time to flip this (or any) pancake! Cook until the other side is lightly browned and the insides are baked through. Remove from heat and enjoy!

Unadorned, this recipe with stevia is about 140 calories, 2 g fat, 8 g protein, 1 g sugar and 3 g fiber. Multiply the recipe by two or three if you’re hungry or need to replenish the fuel you burned after a long run. Or adjust accordingly if you’re hosting a crowd. :)

Feel free to add any mix-ins or toppings that sound tasty to you. I opted for a nectarine (the first one I spotted this season—I know it’s a little early but I had to jump the gun and take advantage at least once). Here are some other tempting ideas:

• Berries
• Apples (would go especially well with the cinnamon!) or pears
• Banana, mashed or sliced and added to the batter
• Pumpkin stirred in, if you enjoy the taste of it more than I do :)
• Nut butter or PB2
• Low-sugar jelly/jam
• Yogurt

What is your favorite weekend breakfast or brunch dish? And what are your favorite waffle or pancake mix-ins or toppers?

The weather this week has been just right to swing by a cafe for an iced tea or iced coffee—or so the long lines streaming out onto the sidewalk tell me! I’m not a coffee drinker myself (and yes, I hear that I’m crazy often) but know that when you’re given your choice of powders to sweeten your drink, there are more than a few options.

So here are some fast facts about the usual suspects you may encounter beyond the typical cane sugar.

• Sugar in the Raw: Made from turbinado sugar grown in the tropics (about 20 calories per packet)
• Splenda: A mixture of maltodextrin and dextrose, which are corn derivatives that help the product sprinkle like sugar, along with sucralose (about 3 calories per packet)
• Equal: Aspartame, dextrose and maltodextrin (about 4 calories per packet)
• NuStevia: Stevia extract, a compound derived from the stevia plant, and maltodextrin (about 2 calories per packet)
• Sweet ‘N Low: Saccharin, blended with cream of tartar and dextrose (about 4 calories per packet)

For context, if you compared equal amounts of each, saccharin and aspartame are 200 times sweeter than sugar, stevia is 300 times sweeter and sucralose is 600 times sweeter than cane sugar. Those facts, and the ability to sprinkle/pour the powders, explain the other ingredients besides the sweeteners themselves.

Many of the sugar substitutes list zero calories on the nutrition panel, which the F.D.A. allows products with fewer than five calories to do since this value is basically inconsequential. It certainly is if you just use one packet, but I wanted to include the calorie estimations in case you add several to your beverage or bake with one of these sweeteners (warning: some sugar substitutes work better in baked goods than others).

So many options, right? The choice of sweetener is a personal one, so now that you have a quick primer on what’s included in each, it’s up to you!

The folks at NuNaturals hooked me up with a few of their latest stevia sweetener products, so I decided to take them for a spin with a recipe by the fabulous Chocolate Covered Katie. I have yet to discover my creative cooking gene. But that doesn’t mean I never fire up the stove…I just often rely on other people’s yummy recipes! And my oh my, Katie has some that look amazing. The first I took a stab at? Chocolate Covered Katie’s Snickerdoodle Pancakes. Pancakes that are flavored like cinnamon cookies? Yes, please.

A few notes based on the way I made the recipe my own:

• I opted for whole-wheat pastry flour in place of spelt flour
• For the non-dairy milk, I chose for Unsweetened Plain Almond Breeze (I bet the vanilla version would be delicious as well!)
• To sweeten the batter, I included packets of NuNaturals stevia sweetened the batter, although it could have used just a touch more

Nutrition Info (without toppings): approximately 250 calories, 2 g. fat

My food photography is nowhere near as mouthwatering as Katie’s, but the product still turned out plenty tasty. The stevia powder worked really well here as the sweetener—and tasted great—and I plan to try another batch using the liquid extract to compare the results. What a fun kitchen science experiment!

Do you develop your own recipes in the kitchen or mainly follow foolproof recipes from others?

While brunch seems to be a phenomenon mainly enjoyed in larger cities, the concept is quite popular across the country. No longer relegated to just Mother’s Day and Easter, brunch out on the town is a fun way to celebrate days that you don’t have to work or go to school. Eat a meal at a restaurant in the mid-morning or early afternoon? Don’t mind if I do! 

But just because this meal has a name that combines two other meals doesn’t mean that you need to consume multiple meal’s worth of calories :)

Yesterday, I had a lovely treat by joining my great friend Jenn for brunch at Tempo Cafe. I dined on the scrumptious Morning Glory (“a trio of fresh strawberries, bananas and blueberries combined with your choice of either pancakes, French toast or waffle”) with buckwheat pancakes.

SO good! This dish brings me to tip number one: if you top your sweet items, such as crepes, pancakes, French toast, waffles, etc., with fresh fruit, you won’t even miss syrup (thus saving hundreds of calories). Did you know that just 1/4 cup of maple syrup has 210 calories and 48 grams of sugar? Pour at your own risk ;) Many restaurants offer sugar free syrup varieties that have a fraction of the calories if you don’t mind artificial sweeteners.

Tip number two: when ordering anything you think may come with butter on top (toast, pancakes, a bagel), ask for it on the side. Normally, the chef smothers on copious amounts of butter that you wouldn’t normally eat. Ordering it on the side allows you to use a small amount if you like— or none at all, which you can’t do if your dish already has a scoop of butter on it!

 (Image from Baking Bites)

Tip number three: if you wake up more than a couple hours before your brunch is planned, eat a little something. You don’t need to starve until your “meal” and it’s wise not to. By biting a bit before the brunch, you’ll stoke your metabolism after sleeping (and fasting) all night as well as ease your hunger so you won’t tear up the entire brunch buffet or menu. A fruit cup, 1/2 an english muffin with a small smear of peanut butter or a hard boiled egg may do the trick. This tip is especially important if you plan to hit a brunch buffet (although the a la carte menu is generally a simpler way to end up with a reasonably-sized brunch). Watch those portion sizes!

Tip number four: watch your glasses! It’s way too easy to overdose on calories and alcohol if you partake in bottomless Bloody Marys or mimosas. Feel free to treat yourself to one, but try to switch to water after that if you can. You’ll thank me the next day! Plus, is it just me or is it much more satisfying to eat calories and nutrients rather than drink them?

 (Image from Drink Inventor)

And finally, tip number five: when opting for eggs, egg whites have lower calories than whole eggs (although the yolk does have good qualities too, so weigh your options). I like to order veggie-packed omelets or scrambles with either egg substitute or egg whites. Some restaurants will even cook these dishes in PAM/cooking spray rather than tablespoons of oil—you just have to ask!

…Which is basically the main lesson today: don’t be afraid to ask for your restaurant dishes to be made the way you want them to be made. The worst that can happen is the server will say no! At most restaurants, the servers and chefs want you, the customer to be happy. 

So there you have it! My top five Healthful Bites brunch tips. Now it’s your turn: what are your orders, tips and tricks to dine out well at brunch?