Swapping Cookies…and Enjoying Pumpkin Protein Pancakes

I wanted to tell you guys about this little badge you may have seen on my homepage recently.

I am so excited to be taking part in the first Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, hosted by Lindsay at Love and Olive Oil and Julie at the little kitchen.

Each blogger that registers is required to whip up three dozen of your best cookies, then ship a dozen of them to three different bloggers that you will be matched up with. You then receive a batch of cookies to taste/sample/inhale and then everyone publishes the recipes on a set date. The links to all will be posted by Lindsay and Julie and everyone can get plenty of inspiration for next year’s (they hope to make this an annual event).You can state dietary preferences if you have any (gluten-free etc.). I put naturally sweetened cookies only if possible (if not I will just taste bites and share the rest with my friends and family, so I doubt there would be any complaints there!). I will be making my recipe using natural sweeteners only.

If you are interested, here are the basic deadlines, though if I misquote, feel free to reference Lindsay’s post here with full directions:

• Sign up to take part by Tuesday November 15th (originally open to US/Canadian bloggers but they’ve already opened it up to Australia, Italy, the UK, Argentina and the Czech Republic so if there is interest in your country, contact them!)
• You will receive your matches by Monday November 21st
• You should ship your cookies off by Monday December 5th
• You should have your cookie recipe ready to publish on Monday December 12th

Out of my bloggy friends, I know that Kate has also signed up, and at last count I believe the swap had received more than 500 sign-ups!

Those of us who are tweeting about it use the hashtag #fbcookieswap, so feel free to check that out next time you’re in Twitterland. And let me know if you sign up!

For today, I would share with you a cookie recipe but it’s been a while since I gave you something to eat for breakfast, and although we would all love to live in a world where can have cookies for breakfast every day, it’s not really advisable (once in a while can’t hurt though, right?). Also, tomorrow I’m going to have a breakfast quinoa recipe for you! So there will soon be lots of breakfasts to choose from on this blog!

My last breakfast post was my breakfast staple – Packed Pumpkin Porridge – a delicious bowl of creamy oats flavoured for the fall season with pumpkin.

Since it’s still technically fall (is it? When does it officially become winter again?), let’s stick with this pumpkin theme. As I said in my What I Ate Wednesday post last week, my naturopath (and I know some of you have asked more about my naturopath’s advice so there’s a bit of an update on that coming up in tomorrow’s post!) advised that I not eat the same breakfast every day (whoops). If I do, my body might become sensitive to it. That scared me! No more oats? I can’t bear the thought!

She also advised I inject some protein into my breakfasts.

Well, sure.

The pumpkin protein pancake was born!

I made these using dairy to amp up the protein. I also have a recipe for pancakes that use a protein powder to boost their protein power, rather than dairy, so for my vegan friends, stay tuned. It will also be gluten-free – yay! (You’ll see why in tomorrow’s post).

This pancake recipe was inspired by this one, but I found the ingredients proportions in that one to be a bit off as my pancakes first-time round came out wet and heavy and soggy in the middle…bleh. So I shifted the ingredient amounts around a bit. See what you think!

*A 2-pancake serving will give you just under 12g protein. Add pumpkin protein frosting on top and you’ll amp that up to nearly 18g of protein for just 260 calories!

Pumpkin Protein Pancakes (makes about 6)

INGREDIENTS:

1/3 cup cottage cheese
1/3 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup dry oats
2 eggs
1 tbsp olive or canola oil
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2 tsp vanilla

DIRECTIONS:

1. Easy! Blend all ingredients together in a blender. If batter is too thick you can add some water or almond milk to thin it out but you want it to be thick so it makes fluffy pancakes!

2. Drop batter in tablespoonfuls onto griddle or into frying pan. Cook until bubbles appear in the wet batter on top and then flip.

3. Serve with nut butter, Greek yogurt, maple syrup, fresh fruit, crumbled walnuts/pecans or the pumpkin protein frosting inspired by Katie, for which I have the recipe below.

Nutritional information is for pancakes only (no toppings), per pancake if batter makes 6:

Pumpkin Protein Frosting

INGREDIENTS (should serve 2-3):

1 scoop vanilla or plain flavoured protein powder (I use Kaizen Whey Gourmet but I know a popular one in the blog world is Sunwarrior)
2 tbsp pumpkin puree
A little bit of water (judge it by consistency)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Mix the pumpkin and protein powder together.

2. Slowly add water until it becomes the right consistency for frosting – some like it thicker and others like it runnier!

Nutritional information for each serving of pumpkin protein frosting if serves 3: