Blogger Secret Ingredient Contest: Pancake Mix!

Good morning all!

So last night I had some free time and decided to do a little experimenting in the kitchen because the lovely Caitlin is hosting week 52 of the Blogger Secret Ingredient Contest. Basically, each week a new blogger hosts, and picks a special ingredient. Anyone can enter a recipe, but they have to use the ingredient in a creative way. So this week’s secret ingredient was… <drum roll>… pancake mix!

First things first:

 

Cooking is way better with wine 🙂 And music. Which was also involved 😉

So… wanna know what I made??

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……………………………………… FALAFEL!!!

Creative, right?!? I hope so, anyway 🙂

The star ingredient:

Secret Ingredient Falafel

Ingredients:

• 1/3 C whole grain pancake mix
• 1 can garbanzo beans
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/2 C fresh parsley (lightly packed)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp ground flaxseed
• 1/2 tsp dried coriander
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• juice of 1/2 lemon

Instructions:

First, preheat oven to 400.  Then toss all the ingredients into a food processor! It should look like this:

 

Whirl it around in the food processor until it’s pretty much evenly mixed.

Form patties into flattened balls (it should make about 5 to 6) and place on a cooking sheet. Pop in the oven for about 15 minutes.

Once I put the falafel in the oven, I was still feeling creative, so on a whim I decided to whip up a yogurt/cucumber sauce similar to those I always love at falafel shops.

Cucumber-Yogurt Sauce

Ingredients:

• 6 oz container non-fat plain Greek yogurt
• 1 clove garlic
• Juice from 1 whole lemon
• 1/3 of a cucumber, sliced

Once again, I popped it all in the food processor….

…gave it a whirl, and voila! Amazing sauce. Mmmm this came out SO good!!

 

A tip for the lemons when you’re done with them – put them down the disposal… it makes it smell really nice 🙂

So by this point, my falafel was done!!!

I enjoyed two of them for dinner on top of a brown rice wrap (from Trader Joes.. these would also be awesome in a pita if I hadn’t just had one for lunch!). I drizzled drowned them in cucumber sauce, added some fresh cucumber, tomatoes, and spinach, and I was ready to rock!

 

….Except that once I added the spinach and actually tried to roll it up, my wrap was TOTALLY exploding and about to be a HUGE mess.

Good thing I’m a genius 🙂 Tin foil saves the day!!

So excited to have more falafel today for lunch… I’m thinking on top of a big salad with my cucumber sauce 🙂 I can’t wait to see what everyone else whipped up for the secret ingredient contest!

Hope you’re having a nice day so far! Mine has been productive… knocked out a couple hours of Organic chem homework, did some laundry, made some calls, etc. This afternoon I have do some editing work for my job, and we get our second exams back in chem class… eeek!

Now I’m heading off to my favorite class at the gym – PiYo – which is a pilates/yoga mix. I LOVE pilates and while I like yoga, I don’t like doing a full hour of it, so this is perfect for me 🙂 The instructor is great, too. Doesn’t that make all the difference?

Have a good one! 🙂