Making Pancakes with Acorn Flour

Written by Dyami Millarson

My father and I picked acorns in Leeuwarden this autumn just like last year when we picked acorns for the very first time, turned them into acorn flour for the first time as well and made acorn cookies using the acorn flour that we had produced ourselves. It was a delightful experience last year, there is really nothing more satisfying than producing your own food. So we picked acorns this year as well to turn them into acorn flour. However, unlike last year, we decided to use our acorn flour this year for making pancakes. We observed many Dutch people were making pancakes this year that has been defined by various responses to the pandemic.

We mixed the acorn flour with normal flour just like we did in 2019 for making cookies. We experimented with the proportions and found the right approximate proportions after a few times of trying. We used different mixes this year and sometimes we also added our homemade elderberry syrup instead of acorn flour to the pancake mix, which produced delicious sweet pancakes with a light elderberry flavour. I think that adding homemade acorn flour and adding homemade elderberry syrup were our best 2020 pancake mix ideas for 2020. We ran out of elderberry syrup towards the year’s end, but we still have acorn flour and so we can still produce acorn pancakes or cookies whenever we so desire.

Normal flour which we prepared for making the pancake mix.

This is our bucket with acorn flour. The picture may give you an impression of the size of the bucket. Making this much acorn flour was a huge ordeal. The bucket is meant to last a year until next autumn.

This is the inside of the bucket with acorn flour. We regard acorn flour as a homemade vitamin powder because acorn flour contains a lot of healthy vitamins just like rose hip powder.

Some acorn flour, which is our special ingredient for this pancake mix, has been added as you can see.

Two eggs have been added to the pancake mix.

We used a special Surinamian rum in the pancake mix. We do not drink alcohol at all, but we only use it for cooking.

We used this ecological milk for the pancake mix.

We poured the milk into the bowl which we were using.

Here you can see my father handling the fresh vanilla. Vanilla is the chef’s secret ingredient as we say in Dutch.

A close-up of the vanilla. The dark substance is what will be added to the pancake mix.

My father has scraped the dark substance off the vanilla bean here. The black substance was a bit sticky. You may wonder what the black substance is and why there are these round shapes when you look closely: the black substance is actually vanilla seeds. While the inside of the vanilla bean consists of seeds just like the inside of any regular bean, the name ‘vanilla bean’ is definitely appropriate.

The black substance you see in the picture is the vanilla (seeds) which we added to the pancake mix. This gives our pancakes their delicious flavour. It is truly the chef’s secret ingredient as we say!

We added some more milk to get the right consistency for the pancake mix. Just add more as you go. We do not really work with exact amounts, but we rely on our intuition for deciding the right proportions.

We added some more milk again later whilst we were using the mixer. Just keep adding some milk until it is right!

This is the ecological Canadian maple syrup we used to sweeten the pancake mix. My father told me that the Canadians are famous for their maple syrup.

We poured some maple syrup into the bowl with the pancake mix. The pancake mix was almost finished, we mixed it and then it was completely ready to be used for making pancakes.

We poured some of the pancake mix into the middle of the pan and made sure it spread evenly by moving the pan around. The first pancake was ready after waiting for a short while.

This is the first acorn pancake we made that night. Yummy. It was really delicious. We made many more that night and left some of the pancake mix for the next day. Usually when you leave the mix for 1 day, it tastes better the next day.

19 comments

Looks scrumptious! Didn’t know you could make acorn pancakes. I will have to try.

LikeLiked by 7 people

Never heard of acorn flour… sounds delightful 🙂

LikeLiked by 5 people

Interesting. I’ve heard Native Americans used acorn flour, but have never tried it.

LikeLiked by 6 people

Might just be me, but the photos didn’t load – but I can follow the description so no overall loss.

LikeLiked by 2 people

I have never used acorn flour. Interesting. Thank you for sharing.

LikeLiked by 4 people

I never knew acorns can be made into flour

LikeLiked by 4 people

Reblogged this on Nelson MCBS // Love Alone.

LikeLiked by 3 people

Never heard of such pancakes. Never try to make acorn flour as well. How does it taste?a bit sweet maybe? Maybe you should show picturesssssssss.

LikeLiked by 4 people

Healthy and delicious?! This is what I aspire to. =)

LikeLiked by 3 people

Rum in pancakes? I like it! 🌞

LikeLike

This is really cool. Acorn flour seems to give a little woodland flair to baking pancakes. It makes me think fondly of stories by Beatrix Potter, or the Wind in the Willows. And I love the ingenuity of hunting/gathering, and using the finest ingredients. Yum!

LikeLike

A great idea would be to add a link to this post describing your adventure to gather and make flour from the acorns! 😁 That must have been a lot of nuts! 🌰

LikeLike

I’ve never made my own flour – wouldn’t know how to to start. I used to make a lot of my own bread and rolls with whole wheat and a bit of corn masa. For pancakes I like blue corn flour, buckwheat or oatmeal flour, or some mixture of those. And, always, pure maple syrup. There aren’t any acorns around here. People add pinon nuts to blue corn pancakes, but not for me. I like smooth flour pancakes. Pinon is good when roasted with coffee beans.

LikeLike