Another week crossed off my countdown on this autoimmune protocol, and again, another short blog post for this week. I started off somewhat strong on my journey, at least partially excited about some new foods and recipes to try, but the wheels are falling off the cart. While I do feel like this diet is actually bringing some healing to my body, it is downright miserable. I didn’t make much of anything new and noteworthy this past week, except banana pancakes made with cassava flour, which were surprisingly really yummy!

I splurged at Whole Foods this week and bought a bag of cassava flour. I’ve been practically living off of sweet potatoes and kabocha squash for my carbohydrate needs, devouring entire halves of kabocha squashes in one meal sittings. So, I needed to change it up just a bit. Cassava flour is a flour made from the cassava, or yucca root, a starchy, tuber-like root. You’ve heard of tapioca, right? Well, tapioca is also derived from the yucca root, but tapioca is only comprised of the starches extracted from the root, whereas cassava flour is made from the entire root, dried and pulverized into a fine meal. Cassava flour is still very starchy and makes for a superb ingredient in gluten and grain-free baking. I had neither purchased nor used cassava flour before, so I decided to take an elementary approach with this foreign ingredient and make banana pancakes. Aside from having a sticky, glutinous texture, resembling that of Korean duk, which I somewhat expected due to the flour’s high starch content, they were simple and delicious. I topped my pancakes with some defrosted frozen blueberries, which essentially became an instant compote upon heating them in the microwave.

I plan to experiment more with my cassava flour this week, but for now, here is my pancake recipe!

AIP banana pancakes

makes a

bout 4 pancakes (one serving for me!)

1/2 cup cassava flour

1/4 tsp. baking powder

3/4 cup water, slightly less if you want thicker pancakes

1 large banana

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. coconut oil

top with maple syrup or warmed blueberry compote

Mash the banana in a bowl with the coconut oil and set aside. Mix the cassava flour, baking powder, and cinnamon in a separate bowl. Slowly add the water to the flour mixture and stir to combine. Stir in the mashed banana and continue mashing all the ingredients together to form one uniform texture. Add more water if needed. Heat a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Scoop about 1/4 cup of the pancake batter at a time into the skillet. Cook the pancakes for about 3-5 minutes on the first side, or until you see bubbles beginning to form and the edges of the pancake begin to easily lift off the pan when using a spatula. Then flip the pancakes and cook on the other side for another 2 minutes. Repeat until all the batter is used. Serve hot with maple syrup or warmed defrosted frozen blueberries on top.