Red Velvet Pancakes/ Waffles

Have you ever woke up and thought to yourself "Man, I'd love to have some beets for breakfast!"   No?  Seriously?  Haha  ME NEITHER!  I do love beets just about any way they are served though. We are also extremely lucky that our kids (minus the 2 year old)  have no issues with any sort of vegetable.  We have a pretty strict rule of eat it or just be hungry.  The kids know that not everything has to be their favorite but they will eat their dinner.  We had some leftover beets from a few nights ago and I knew I wanted to try to incorporate them in some new ways.  I'll point out that normally there aren't even leftovers here but we cooked extra just to have leftovers, so for us that meant cooking 3 bunches!!  I had found several recipes on Pinterest, of course, for beet pancakes but they each had ingredients that we either don't use or just don't have on hand.  Here's the product of putting some ideas together and running with it! 

These are Dairy Free Red Velvet Pancakes (or waffles)  Bear with me as I learn lighting in the new kitchen!  I will also add that these are super duper fluffy and you could easily use 1 TB of baking powder.  These were so good that I had to make a 2nd batch this morning!

 Ingredients:

1 3/4 cup All Purpose Flour
6 TB sugar
2 TB Baking Powder
1TB cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
Appx 3/4 cup of cooked beets
 1 2/3 cup Almond Milk
1 Egg
3 TB Butter Substitute
1 tsp Vanilla

 Sift all dry ingredients

 Place beets and about 3/4 of your milk into blender and give them a good whirl until you don't see any large lumps.  Note: if you do have big lumps you can just remove them with a fork.  I have learned a trick for cooking Dairy Free as well.  When making baked goods it seems to work really well to beat lots of air into them.  This helps keep everything nice and fluffy!

 Add the mixture to a bowl then add the rest of your milk to the blender, replace lid, and shake to remove all of the beet.  Then you will mix the rest of the wet ingredients. 

 Then incorporate the wet into the dry without over mixing. 

 This was kind of thick but it's personal preference.  If you want your batter more runny just increase the milk in the beginning of the recipe. 

Whoa, lighting on this side of the stove is a little crazy!  Holy hot pink!  LOL  Once batter is mixed you can cook them on preheated griddle or waffle iron.

 The finished pancakes look a little brown once cooked but the inside is beautiful!

 Now just imagine these drizzled with a bit of chocolate sauce!  OH MY!!  It's a good thing I didn't have those ingredients because I would have eaten the whole batch! 

 They were perfect though drizzled with some local honey!