Our country has been in quarantine for half a year already. With that, we face challenges and concerns in purchasing food and other household needs. For one, the increase in number of cases is still alarming that we rather avoid public spaces – which include supermarkets or groceries. To address that concern, we rely heavily on stores online. Buying groceries online can get costly due to the shipping fee. We try work around that either by free shipping vouchers, by looking for stores which offer more items that we need or by buying in bulk.
Finding ways to be more creative in meal options is also necessary since most of our meal are now consumed at home. We can’t just order delivery every day. Versatile food items are now a mainstay in my pantry – one of these is the pancake mix
I managed to transform a bag of pancake mix to a variety of sweet snacks for the family. And here are a few of what I made:
Dorayaki
- 1 cup pancake mix
- 1 medium/large egg
- 1 cup water
- Red bean filling:
- 1 cup red mongo/adzuki beans
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/8 cup water
- Soak your red mongo/adzuki beans overnight.
- Boil the beans until soft and mash them.
- In a saucepan, dissolve the sugar in water over low flame and add the mashed red beans.
- Keep stir the mixture over the flame until it form a thick paste. Set aside and cool.
- Prepare the pancake as per package instructions.
- Make a sandwich with the red bean filling between two pancakes.
Alternatively, you can cook it like the Indonesian martabak manis But instead of the red bean filling, you can with condensed milk and crushed peanuts. I didn’t have peanuts, so I just used peanut butter
Steamed Banana Cake
- 1 cup pancake mix
- 3 overripe bananas
- 1 medium/large eggs
- 3/4 cup water
- 1 tbsp oil
- optional: vanilla extract
- In a bowl, mash the bananas to your desired consistency.
- Add the egg and oil, and mix until fully incorporated. You may add vanilla if available.
- Sift in the pancake mix and gently fold. Slowly add in the water as you fold.
- Pour the batter in a lightly greased, steamer-friendly tray.
- Steam for 20 minutes. The cake is ready when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
This is like a cross between puto and banana bread! I usually make this when my sister is about to cook rice so I can just put the steamer basket on the rice cooker. 😀
What cooking tricks have you learned and adapted to during this pandemic? Feel free to share your thoughts or even your own recipes in the comments below.
The Eclectic Miss 