High Protein, Low Carb Pancakes!
One day last week my body decided that I want pancakes. I had to create a recipe that resulted in the perfect, fluffy, high protein, low carb pancakes. This post is my success!
I never even liked pancakes to begin with. In the days before keto, I never ordered pancakes at diners, or ever thought highly of them. It’s just that my idea of a treat involved pounds of chocolate in all different forms. Pancakes to me were just round pieces of bread in a stack. They were delicious, but I never craved them as much as brownies or cookies.
Even so, for some reason beyond my understanding, I wanted pancakes. And badly. After looking through dozens of recipes for simple, low carb pancakes, there were a few decent ones but they were incredibly high in calories and required tons of ingredients. I wanted something simple and affordable that doesn’t involve using up a whole cup of almond flour- that stuff’s expensive.
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Protein pancakes sounded like a good contender. Unfortunately, the protein pancake recipes I’d been seeing were not looking so appetizing so I did what any desperate Tasteaholic would do in this situation- create my own low carb pancakes. It took a week and 4 official attempts at fluffy, moist, low carb, protein pancakes. It was a great week for us… eating pancakes infinitely more times than usual, and I finally got the right combination of ingredients! Here’s a sneak peek at the method, highly technical notes and all:
Protein Powder
It’s important to know which protein powder to use when baking. You can go the route of unflavored if you wish, but I like to purchase a big jug of Creamy Vanilla flavored Isopure Whey Protein Powder. It’s affordable considering the lack of additives and fillers many other brands use. The Creamy Vanilla flavor is 0 carb, full of protein and tastes great. The brand itself packs a lot of greatness into one scoop of the protein powder. It’s full of vitamins and minerals and I consider it one of the best supplements to my diet.
You can also try out casein protein powder (which is a similar protein found in milk). It’s a slower metabolizing protein and works very well as a thickener in recipes.
Recipe Notes
Not only did I discover the right combination of ingredients (for personal preference), I also fine-tuned my method of making the pancakes themselves. Here are some handy tips I can pass on:
- Use Softened Butter
Use softened butter in the pancake batter instead of melted butter, or say coconut oil. This ensures extra moisture in the pancakes since the butter melts while cooking and remains inside the pancakes rather than seeping out. - Cooking on the Right Fat
We tried these pancakes on several different fats including coconut oil, spray oil, butter and bacon grease. We wouldn’t recommend using butter as it tends to burn when left on the heat too long. Coconut oil and spray oil worked equally well in creating nice, uniformly brown pancakes. Our favorite oil for cooking pancakes was bacon grease! It made our pancakes extra crispy on the outside without browning them too much. - Watch Your Heat
If your pan/griddle is too hot, your pancakes will burn before they’re properly cooked. If your pan is not hot enough your pancakes won’t be fluffy – the batter will spread to the edges of the pan and the pancake won’t brown properly. Try the pancakes on a medium flame and adjust from there. - Do not Press the Pancake
Due to impatience the first time, I thought the pancake would cook faster if I pressed on it with the spatula after flipping it. I was wrong. Ended up with very tough and dry pancakes. - Flipping Only When Ready
The pancakes should cook on their first side longer than the second side. A good way to tell when the pancakes are ready to be flipped is when the air bubbles that escape through the top are not refilled with surrounding batter. Using a wide spatula, wedge and wiggle it underneath and with one swift motion of the wrist, flip the pancake. When flipped, do not move it, let the pancake cook undisturbed. Moving the pancake around could rip the pancake. - Drench in Butter and Syrup
No matter your diet, a pancake is lonely without butter and syrup. In our case, we used Kerrygold Salted Irish Butter and Walden Farms Calorie-free Pancake Syrup. The syrup tastes great and has 0 grams of carbs.
Want More Pancakes? Try These!
We would recommend these low carb pancakes to anyone- low carb diet or not! They’re delicious, fluffy, moist and flavorful. The addition of bacon added some savory notes to the pancakes. We’re excited to try this recipe with some added berries, nuts, chocolate chips, peanut butter and other add ins!
If you don’t have Belgian Cookie Speculoos Syrup (it’s a pretty specific ingredient) you can also use any kind of 0 carb sweetener in it’s place. The syrup is sweetened with Splenda, so the granulated version would work well in the pancakes. The taste of the Speculoos syrup mimics the pancake taste very well, but omitting it completely will still leave you with tasty pancakes.
Onto the Recipe!
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Macros per serving:
• 500 Calories
• 37g of Fat
• 38g of Protein
• 1g of Carbs
| Serves |
| 2 servings |
| Prep Time |
| 10 minutes |
| Cook Time |
| 10 minutes |
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| Servings: servings |
- 2 scoops vanilla protein powder (25g of protein per scoop)
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 tbsp coconut flour
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
- 4 tbsp unsalted butter (softened)
- 1 tbsp heavy cream
- 2 tbsp Belgian cookie syrup (optional)
- 2 strips bacon
- Combine all your dry ingredients and set aside.
- Combine all your wet ingredients. Make sure the butter you’re using is salted (or add some additional salt to the batter) and softened. Softened butter will melt as you're cooking your pancakes and add more moisture.
- Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour your wet ingredients in. Mix with a spoon until the batter is just combined. The batter should be chunky! Do not over mix!
- At this point, you can add in any fold-ins you’d like. They can be berries, nuts, chocolate chips or, in our case, bacon! We cooked and chopped up 4 strips of bacon and added them to our pancake batter.
- Heat up a pan or a skillet with some oil (or bacon grease! It gave our pancake a crunchy outer shell without burning them). Use butter with caution as it tends to burn if let on the pan for too long. We recommend coconut oil.
- Use an ice cream scoop or a ¼ cup measuring spoon/cup to ladle pancake batter onto your pan.
- Let the pancake cook undisturbed until you see bubbles forming on the top. If the bubbles pop right away and are filled with surrounding batter, it’s too early to flip the pancake. Wait until the bubbles pop and the holes remain.
- Flip with a spatula in one swift motion and let the pancake cook on its second side for about a minute. Don’t overcook.
- Transfer to a plate and add a little butter to the top of each pancake.
- Serve stacked with a drizzle of sugar-free pancake syrup!
- Enjoy!
Loved this recipe? Let us know! Something didn’t quite turn out right? Ask us in the comments below or contact us– we respond to comments every day and would love to hear from you and help you out! And check out all our keto recipes to learn to make more delicious and healthy meals!
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The content on this website should not be taken as medical advice and you should ALWAYS consult with your doctor before starting any diet or exercise program. We provide nutritional data for our recipes as a courtesy to our readers. We use Total Keto Diet app software to calculate the nutrition and we remove fiber and sugar alcohols, like erythritol, from the total carbohydrate count to get to the net carb count, as they do not affect your blood glucose levels. You should independently calculate nutritional information on your own and not rely on our data. The website or content herein is not intended to cure, prevent, diagnose or treat any disease. This website shall not be liable for adverse reactions or any other outcome resulting from the use of recipes or recommendations on the Website or actions you take as a result. Any action you take is strictly at your own risk.
You’ll Love Our Breakfast in Five Cookbook!
We believe that the key to success is simplicity and satisfaction with your diet. That’s why we created Breakfast in Five – 30 low carb breakfast recipes all using just 5 ingredients and 5 net carbs or fewer!
Enjoy fluffy waffles and pancakes, sweet and savory muffins, porridge, omelettes and much more every day of the month.
Dr. Rosmy Barrios, MD is an aesthetic medicine specialist whose work focuses on patients who are treated for obesity, metabolic syndrome, and other weight-related issues through nutritional analysis, keto diet programs, and supporting medications.
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I just tried these this morning and the texture is “spot on” from what I remember. My daughter wanted to make sure I remembered what real pancakes taste like so she took a bite and said the same thing, “spot on”. I’ve never been a fan of pancakes but sometimes you just have a craving. This fit the bill. I’ve tried many, many recipes only to chuck the whole thing, but these were amazing. I didn’t have the vanilla protein but I had Julien’s Bakery Blueberry PaleoThin Egg White Protein mix, and they were divine, I even added some bacon crumbles. I strongly suggest following the recipe, don’t overwork and don’t add any more coconut flour than listed or they will become too thick. I’m excited to try them with plain protein and some savory ingredients. I think they will taste like dinner rolls or biscuits easily with a few adaptations. THANK YOU for the inspiration and tastiness!
I love pancakes, and I’ve tried a bunch of low carb pancake recipes, with results from “eh” to “not bad, I guess.” I hadn’t previously considered trying a recipe based on protein powder, but I must say this is the best pancake I’ve had in a long time! Not only do they taste great, but they cook and flip easily just like the original (most recipes I’ve tried rip too easily and are a pain to flip). Only adjustments I made were because we’re at a high altitude: an extra tablespoon of cream plus about three tablespoons of water and just a dash of xanthan gum. Perfect! Thanks so much!
I wanted to make less pancakes so I halved the recipe, but kept the baking powder/ heavy cream amount the same, added a small amount of almond milk to thin. Pancakes came out so good, not like the dry protein powder pancakes recipes I’ve tried. Made 2 large pancakes. Thanks!!!!
Had to add extra whipping cream to try and get a wet consistency but still not as pictured above. More like cookie dough than pankace mix. Wish I could post a picture.
Thank you for listing how much should be in that scoop of protein powder. I’ve noticed that not all scoops are the same size, and if a recipe says 1 scoop without listing the grams, it can really mess up your recipe. These look really good!
Just made these today and they are wonderful! I was craving something sweet for breakfast and this hit the spot! t
Great to hear! Enjoy, Helen 🙂
This is an unbelievable recipe. Unbelievable in a GOOD way! I followed the recipe exactly as stated, and what came out were the most golden, delicious pancakes that seriously rival any I’ve ever had at the best diners. I’d even say these are better. The fat used in the recipe (butter) and in the cooking (coconut oil) add so much in the way of texture and flavor. I made four pancakes out of this recipe. The very first one was a little burned, but that was because I had the heat too high. My fault. I quickly learned, lowered the heat, and the remaining three came out perfect.
So all you low carbers – you don’t have to be deprived anymore of pancakes. Make these – you won’t regret it! Of course, I topped them with lots of soft butter and sugar free syrup. It was a fantastic meal. Thanks, Vicky and Rami for coming up with this brilliant recipe.
Vicky – is there any way to upload a photo to a review? I took a picture of the ones I made. I’d love to share.
Brian, that’s one the nicest things anyone’s ever said to us!!! I’m so glad you liked them so much! You can post a photo to either Facebook or Instagram and tag us (@tasteaholics) and we should see it. You can also email it to [email protected] 🙂
Vicky, this sounds delicious- I am wondering what could be substituted for the coconut? Need to avoid all nut products. Thanks!
Try oat fiber! It sucks up a bit of moisture like coconut flour does. Maybe 2 tablespoons?
Vicky, thank you! I will definitely try that out!
Another trick for fluffy pancakes is to separate the eggs, beat the whites til stiff, then fold them in gently as the last step, when everything else has been mixed (put the yolks in when you’d normally put in whole eggs). This works for any pancake recipe, but low-carb/gluten-free cakes can always use a little help in the fluffiness department, since gluten strands are what helps the batter “climb”
Hey Jenny, thanks for the tip! That’s exactly what we did when we created a low carb waffle recipe (after the first time was a total, flat fail!)
I made the recipe and only ate 1 serving, which according to your recipe should have been 500 calories and 1 carb. After adding up the calories and carbs of all the ingredients I discovered it was actually 589.08 calories and 3.2 carbs. It is a good recipe but calorie and carb accuracy is extremely important for people who are watching their weight.
It’s great that you added up the macros and calories for yourself as many ingredients will differ heavily brand by brand. We always encourage you to calculate macros yourself if you’re very serious about tracking. We provide a nutritional guide based on the ingredients we used at the time and to the best of our knowledge.
I only have unflavored protein powder….how much vanilla extract should I add to make it taste of vanilla?
Start with 1/2 a teaspoon 🙂
I made these for my boyfriend and myself. They came out great. Very pancake-y. The batter was pretty thick so I added almond milk to thin it out. I also doubled the recipe and used Quest multi baking powder.
Thank you so much for this delicious recipe! I have searching for a pancake recipe that I love for years! Your recipe is my favorite! My protein powder might be drier than yours so I added another tbsp of the whipped cream. I also added cream of tartar and it made my pancakes fluffy. I think it’s perfect for waffles because your recipe makes the pancakes crispy but soft. I’ll have to try making waffles from this recipe. I love your recipe! I also tri d melting a slice of sharp cheddar on top of one pancake and it was absolutely divine. The sugar free carb free syrup is amazing! I got it right away. Thank you again ! More power to you !
That cheese idea sounds amazing, Chechel! Thanks for letting us know you loved the pancakes, it really makes our day! 😀
THESE WERE AMAZING. Thank you so much, Vicky!
I loved all of your advice at the front of the article: cook with a high-heat oil so the pancakes won’t burn, use softened butter, don’t over stir, and don’t heat too high. I think that is just great advice for cooking pancakes in general. I also let my batter sit for about 30 mins before cooking, which I think led to their thick, fluffy texture.
I would say the predominate flavor of these pancakes is butter, followed by vanilla which made it so delicious and impossible to have just one bite.
I didn’t have everything on hand you recommended so here was my version and it came out fluffy, homogenous, and so so scrumptious!
Dry Ingredients
2 Scoops of Vanilla EAS Soy Protein
2 tsp Rumford baking powder
1/4 tsp Morton Iodized salt
1 tbsp finely shredded raw coconut
Wet Ingredients
2 Organic eggs
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
4 tbsp Kerrygold butter (softened)
1 tbsp Horizon Organic Fat Free Milk
Glad to hear they came out great! It’s true, you can never have just one bite. They’re so good, it’s amazing they’re so low in carbs 🙂
Mine came out pretty dry. I am going to try less protein powder and have more of a batter next time.
Even with all the bacon in there?! Next time, feel free to thin the batter out with water or almond milk, I think that should help the moisture. Otherwise, if a batch of pancakes ever comes out a bit dry (due to cook time or any other factors) we always add a bit more butter or syrup to the stack. That always helps!
OK odd question but when you say the batter should be chunky before you put in any fold ins do you leave it chunky or mix it till smooth after the fold ins? I will be making some without any fold ins so want to make sure
Hey Alex, leave it chunky and then gently fold in the add-ins. What I mean is just don’t over-work the batter. It’ll smooth out while cooking 🙂
I love this recipe!! the protein powder I used, left too much of a weird taste. Trying it tomorrow with Quest Protein baking mix. Wish me luck!
Quest should work great! Hope you enjoy the pancakes 🙂
Did anyone else find these too salty. I used the amount required in the recipe and salted butter. I think next time I’ll skip the salt, or use unsalted butter. Definitely were nice and fluffy, but the flavour and texture was not what I wanted.
Next time omit the salt entirely! The bacon you used might have been extra salty and that was enough for you 🙂
Omg yes. I came to the comments to see if anyone had the same experience. I didn’t use bacon, so it wasn’t that. Luckily I made some chocolate whipped cream to go on the side so that helped balance out the crazy saltiness. Otherwise, this is a great recipe, I’ll fiddle with it to reduce the saltiness!
Noted! We’ll adjust the recipe to make it less salty 🙂