As a disclaimer, I’m not known for cooking. It’s something I don’t do too often, but am trying to do more. I finally joined a gym and started lifting weights in September 2011. Along with the weight-lifting, came protein powder. (I primarily use Swanson’s Vanilla Whey Protein Powder). I usually just drank the protein powder with water, because I actually enjoy the taste, but, I also love to snack and when I realized I could make stuff out of protein powder to snack on, that was pretty eye-opening for me.

I have to give thanks to Kirstyn at 24 Hour Fitness here in Hawaii, for being a great trainer and recognizing I had a hard time giving up snacks. She recommended I try out Anna’s =PROTEIN POW(D)ER! website, (thanks to Anna as well)! which has been a huge inspiration to experiment with food and nutrition. I’ve been gathering ingredients, and the first recipe I tried from her site, was for a basic wrap so I could stuff my salmon, crab, etc. into something less carby and more protein-y. I blogged about it in this post: Buzzing in the Kitchen with Psyllium Husks and Egg Whites.

I had one baked Okinawan Sweet Potato left, and knew I wanted to incorporate it into something. I started looking up recipes for protein pancakes online via google. I didn’t have the ingredients I was seeing in most recipes, so I decided to wing it:

Ingredients:

• 5 oz. baked okinawan sweet potato
• 2 egg whites
• 1 scoop vanilla whey protein powder (23 g)
• 1 tbsp. psyllium husks
• cinnamon
• 2 oz. water
• coconut oil (or any other vegetable oil, or olive oil you like)

Remove skin and mash  baked Okinawan Sweet potato with a fork in a cereal bowl. Add egg whites,  protein powder, psyllium husks, and a sprinkle or two of cinnamon, and mix. Slowly add water until the batter has a good consistency for pancake batter.(OK to add more or less than 2 oz. of water).

Fry on both sides in a pan you’ve greased with oil. I greased my pan with coconut oil. I could smell and faintly taste the coconut oil which went well with okinawan sweet potato.

This recipe yielded 2 small pancakes for me.

My (very) estimated breakdown per pancake:
approx. 178 calories, 11.5 g protein.
*This is based off my googling and reading the labels of ingredients used to see how many calories are in everything I listed and then divided by two.

The verdict: It was OK… Not bad for my first attempt at a recipe. It probably needs more tweaking. I think most people would want to put syrup on it. Admittedly, I threw the avocado on there because of the color, and because it was also in my refrigerator. I think this would have been great with some coconut syrup oozing all over it, but I don’t have awesome stuff like coconut syrup in my apartment because I’d go nutz and eat pancakes everyday if I did. Maybe I can find a good coconut syrup recipe though, and then it will be OK.