3-Ingredient Pancakes That Stay Fluffy Against All Odds

A Big Little Recipe has the smallest-possible ingredient list and big everything else: flavor, creativity, wow factor. Psst—we don't count water, salt, black pepper, and certain fats (specifically, 1/2 cup or less of olive oil, vegetable oil, and butter), since we're guessing you have those covered. Today, we’re making pancakes without the usual suspects.

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Pancakes at their best have a crackly-charred border, bouncy-plush center, and can be whipped up when you’re half-asleep on a Saturday morning. In most cases, this means tracking down a reliable recipe—say, buttermilk pancakes or cottage cheese pancakes or overnight-oatmeal pancakes—and keeping it close at hand. But the formula I’m about to tell you is so simple, you could hear it once, and know it by heart.

One banana, third-cup almond flour, two eggs, and a pinch of salt. Got it? Got it.

Maybe you’re raising your eyebrows at the fact that there’s no wheat flour, no sugar, no leaveners, and no milk. None of this is an oversight.

We first caught wind of seemingly-impossible, supposedly-magical, two-ingredient banana pancakes a few years ago, when Sarah Jampel tested some of the most talked-about recipes on the internet. “While we all agreed that these pancakes could use some salt, cinnamon, and maple syrup,” she wrote, “everyone who tried them was pleasantly surprised.”

Actually, a lot of people thought these pancakes could use some cinnamon. Add a teaspoon-ish and this one-up recipe is its own internet hit (see everywhere from Whole Foods to Tasty, not to mention spinoffs like The Food Network with pumpkin pie spice). The idea is, two-ingredient pancakes need something, and cinnamon solves this.

I agree that the two-ingredient version is unfinished. Because, despite developing recipes like one-ingredient chicken broth and two-ingredient chocolate–peanut butter mousse, I get that less is not always more. But! I still don’t think the missing piece is cinnamon.

It’s almond flour. This gluten-free staple is a longtime favorite in French macarons. As Shirley Corriher notes in BakeWise, “A nut meal can provide all the ‘flour’ needed in a cookie.” Or, it turns out, a pancake. Just as cookies rely on flour for structure, pancakes do too. But that flour can be milled from a lot more than wheat.

Here, almond flour fluffs up the batter, the way you would your pillows before you fall asleep. It also reins in the fruity flavor, so you feel less like you’re eating banana bread, and more like you’re eating, you know, pancakes. Not to mention that eggy flavor, which is the greatest complaint when it comes to this recipe. When I asked my husband to guess what was in these, he guessed—deep breath—all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, yogurt, nuts, banana, milk, cream, and baking soda, all before he got to eggs.

You could top these with whatever strikes your fancy. Say, sugared berries and sour cream. Tahini and honey. Or keep it classic, like we did, with salty butter and maple syrup.

If you can’t wait until the weekend for brunch, I should add that these come together in one bowl, swiftly enough to pull off on a workday. After all, you already have the recipe memorized, right?