“Jaffa” pancakes

Sunday mornings have just been that much better since we have really started to embrace ‘Pancake Sunday’.

To decorate our Jaffa pancakes (and to compliment the chocolate-orange theme we have going on), we melted some Loving Earth orange raw chocolate to drizzle on top. A crucial addition if you ask us.

Method

1. Combine buckwheat flour, almond meal, lucuma, baking powder and cardamon in a mixing bowl.
2. Add in eggs, soaked chia seeds, orange juice/zest and honey and mix until all ingredients are combined.
3. Now, prepare your choc-orange sauce…
4. Combine cacao powder and coconut nectar in a small bowl, add a dash of boiling water and mix together.
5. Add in tahini (or almond butter) and orange juice/zest and mix.
6. Place 1 tsp coconut oil in a non-stick pan and allow to melt on medium heat.
7. Once the pan has heated, add in a small amount of the pancake mix and leave to cook for 1-2 minutes (or until bubbles start to form around the outside) then flip and allow the other side to cook for a minute or so.
8. Repeat this process for the rest of the mixture.
9. Serve and top with choc-orange sauce.

Why is eating the whole orange more beneficial than just taking a Vitamin C tablet?

Oranges, like other citrus fruits, are best known for their exceptional Vitamin C content.  Vitamin C is an essential anti-oxidant nutrient for human health, vital for connective tissue health, immunity and tissue repair.    Severe deficiency of this nutrient results in the now rare disease, Scurvy.  However, Vitamin C in oranges appears to be more bio-available and afford greater free radical protection of DNA than the vitamin alone (when compared in like for like dosages).  Yet another example of the whole food being more beneficial than one of its constituents (the whole being greater than the sum of its parts).

Other important identified phytochemicals in oranges include flavanones such as herperidin, which have been associated with a lowered risk of various cancers,  hypertension and inflammatory conditions including asthma and arthritis.  Many of these nutrients, however, are found in the rind of the orange.  Other compounds found in citrus peel, called polymethoxylated flavones, have also been shown, in some studies, to have an effect of lowering cholesterol to a similar degree to statins.  Hence, in this recipe using the zest allows us to capture more of these properties.

Other health benefits of oranges include the fact that they are high in fibre, are low GI (glycaemic index) and contain other nutrients including carotenoids (anti-oxidant molecules that are also pre-cursors to Vitamin A), Vitamins B1, B5 and B9.

For maximum nutrient content, purchase organic oranges, as fresh as possible.  The longer they are stored, the more nutrient depletion occurs.  Some of nutrients in oranges are also sensitive to heat, however in this recipe this should be minimal due to short cooking time of hotcakes, no cooking of choc-orange sauce and accompanying fresh orange segments.