Fluffy Oatmeal pancakes (Gluten & Dairy Free)

This is my favourite easy recipe for fluffy oatmeal pancakes made with gluten-free oats, gluten-free flour and dairy-free milk.

These pancakes are amazingly light and fluffy, which makes them easy to digest and delicious to eat. Serve hot or cold with fresh raspberries and drizzling of maple syrup or your other favourite pancake toppings.

Why make this recipe?

• Light & easy to digest pancakes
• Nutritious & full of fibre
• More filling than usual pancakes
• Can be made vegan
• Can easily be adapted to made with regular oats, milk and flour

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MY OTHER PANCAKE RECIPES

• Mango Pancakes (with fresh or canned mango fruit) >>
• Poppy Seeds Drop Scones (firmer pancakes) >>
• Truly sugar free pancakes (with no sugar substitute) >>

My top tips on making Fluffy Oatmeal Pancakes successfully the first time round

This pancake recipe is pretty standard as a pancake recipe, but there is one step that I like to do before I mix everything together.

To make sure that my oats are as soft as possible (and easy to digest) I leave them to soak in a boiled water. You can prepare them in the evening and leave them (covered) in the kitchen (or put them in the fridge if you remember, when they are cold).

Any specialist equipment needed?

Any frying pan, griddle or pancake pan will do, but I’ve recently bought a 4 pancakes frying pan and love how uniform my pancakes are. They also seems to cook better and they are a bit thicker as the batter doesn’t run out.

I’ve used the method of softening the oats before making these oatmeal pancakes rather than making them into an oat flour, which cuts out on using any food processor or blender.

Ingredients & Possible Substitutions

Oats (Gluten – free)

I used Scottish oats, but you can use any type of oats, in particularly rolled or basic oats. I prefer not to use instant oats as they are too finely milled and not as nutritious as normal oats.

If you are making this recipe gluten free, make sure that you use gluten-free oats as regular oats usually contain cross-contamination with other wheat flours and are not suitable for celiacs.

If you have only a slight gluten free intolerance or your prefer to follow gluten-free diet as a lifestyle choice you might be fine with regular oats, but everyone is different.

I personally use basic oats, but sometimes I also buy certified gluten-free oats as I find that they are definitely easier on my digestive system.

Flour (Gluten-free)

I choose to make this recipe gluten free, but you are welcome to swap the flour for normal plain flour if you wish (you won’t need to use the xanthan gum if you do).

Any kind of gluten-free flour mix suitable for cake baking will work in this recipe. You can also make your own flour mix from homemade potato flour, lupin flour and rice flour (about equal amounts are fine).

You can also use part coconut flour, but I would always mix it with another type of gluten free flour as coconut flour absorbs a lot of water and also doesn’t hold well together by itself.

Coconut flour (on it’s own) would also change the flavour of these oatmeal pancakes a little too much (but if you like coconut flavour, then that’s totally fine too).

Other gluten free flours you could use with these oatmeal pancakes

• Buckwheat Flour
• Rice Flour
• Lupin Flour
• Oat Flour (gluten-free certified)
• Coconut Flour
• Potato Flour
• Almond Flour

Milk (Dairy- free)

Again, I wanted to make this recipe suitable for my diet, so I’ve use dairy-free milk, but you are welcome to use any milk dairy or plant based or water – whatever you have available.

This oatmeal pancake recipe will also work well with regular buttermilk, whole milk, semi-skimmed milk, water, a mixture of yoghurt and water (about 50% of both) or even cream and water or milk (again about 50% cream topped up with water or milk).

When substituting the dairy free milk, use the same amount of your chosen milk. If you are using buttermilk or yoghurt, you might need to use a little extra or add a little bit of water as both are quite thick.

Plant based types of milks that go well with these oatmeal pancakes

• Oat Milk
• Soy Milk (some people might find it a little too strong in flavour)
• Coconut milk (great if you are using coconut flour)
• Almond Milk
• Hazelnut Milk
• Cashew Milk
• Quinoa Milk

Xanthan gum

Only use xanthan gum if you are using gluten free flour, as gum helps to keep everything together (it replaces gluten in flour).

Salt

Don’t skip the salt (unless for a health reason) as it helps with the flavour. You might find pancakes without salt a bit bland.

Sugar

I’ve use only a little bit of white caster sugar in this recipe, but if you want to you can skip it completely.

You can also use any other type of sugar or syrup you like, such as honey, golden syrup or any golden syrup substitutes, brown or unrefined sugars such as coconut sugar or coconut sugar replacements – all of these will work great with this recipe.

Egg

To make these oatmeal pancakes extra fluffy I’ve use one egg in this recipe. If you are thinking of making these pancakes for your vegan friends, leave out the egg and use extra water, vegetable oil and baking powder.

To replace one egg, you will need to add – 1-1/2 tablespoons of vegetable oil mixed with 1-1/2 tablespoons of water and 1 teaspoon of baking powder.

You can also replace one egg with 1/2 mashed banana or 1/4 cup of apple sauce or some of the apple sauce substitutes if you like.

Replacing egg with fruit will slightly change the flavour for the oatmeal pancakes, but I think that’s rather nice. You can always add more bananas or fresh apples on the top of your pancakes to serve (and to carry the flavour through).

What can you serve with your pancakes?

Serve hot with fresh fruit, fruit compote, dairy-free yoghurt and a drizzle of maple syrup or honey.

If you want to keep these pancakes easily digestible (aka Low FODMAP) stick to raspberries, maple syrup or dairy free yoghurt. Otherwise anything goes!

• Raspberries
• Maple or Date Syrup or Honey
• Simple Pear Syrup
• Chocolate Spread
• Earl Grey Tea Sugar Syrup >>
• Peanut Butter
• Pumpkin Butter
• Soft Cheese
• Any kind of jam or marmalade such as my tangerine marmalade
• Homemade Apple Sauce

Can I scale up or down this recipe?

Yes, of course, you can. This recipe gives you about 10 small pancakes (about 8 cm or 3 inch wide), which is perfectly good portion for 2 adults or as a snack portion for 4 people.

You can easily double the recipe if you are cooking for a family or want to make some pancakes and freeze them later.

MORE PANCAKE RECIPES

• Light & Fluffy Yeasted Pancakes with whipped egg white >>
• Chocolate Pancakes with cocoa powder >>
• Zesty Lemon Pancakes with Lemon Sauce >>

How to make gluten free oats pancakes recipe

Place the oats in a mixing bowl and pour over about 150 ml of freshly boiled water. This is easier if you have the mixing bowl on a scales that you zero and weight the water as you pour (it’s 150 grams).

Leave the oats for 10-15 minutes (or longer if you want)

Add all the wet ingredients – the egg and milk and stir together.

Add all the dry ingredients – the sugar, salt, baking powder, xantham gum, gluten free flour, cinnamon.

Mix everything together until combined and you have a thick batter.

Pour the pancake batter on a low to medium heated frying pan and turn over when you get bubbles in the middle and the pancake start to look ‘dry’.

MORE PANCAKE RECIPES

• Blueberry (Sugar Free) Pancakes >>
• Buckweed & Banana Pancakes >>
• Almond & Flax Pancakes >>

This recipe and me

I wanted to create a breakfast pancake recipe that would be nutritious, full of fibre, but equally easily digestible.

This is the reason why I’ve chosen the gluten free flour and dairy free milk, although if you want to make your pancakes for anyone who is allergic to gluten, make sure you use gluten-free oats.

How else you can make these oatmeal pancakes?

The best thing is that every time you make these pancakes you can always add a different ingredients and end up with a different flavour. Here are my favourite variations on these oat pancakes

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Pancakes – add 1/4 cup of chocolate chips (about a handful) into the pancake batter

Blueberry Oatmeal Pancakes – add 1/3 cup (or a little more) of fresh blueberries into the pancake batter. Serve with extra blueberries on the top and sweet cream cheese

How to make this recipe into a regular oatmeal pancakes ?

Sometimes, when I’m making my oat pancakes for other people who are not on gluten or dairy free diet I use the same recipe with only one tweak – I leave out the xanthan gum.

To make this recipe into a regular oatmeal pancakes, swap the gluten free flour for white plain or white cake flour, use dairy milk or yoghurt and regular oats. Leave out the xanthan gum, as you don’t need it with a regular flour that contains gluten.

Use the recipe as it with the same quantities.

Gluten free oatmeal pancakes without xanthan gum

Whilst I normally use xanthan gum for most of my gluten free baking, on the occasions when I run out I’ve also tried to make this recipe without it. And to my surprise, it actually worked!

So, if you want to use this fluffy oatmeal recipe without xanthan gum, you are welcome to skip this ingredient and use the recipe as it is.

The egg in this pancake recipe will still help to ‘hold things together’, but you might find that your oatmeal pancakes might be slightly trickier to turn round (flip over) since they won’t have the xanthan gum to act instead of gluten to keep everything together.

Can these oatmeal pancakes be made in advance?

The oat pancakes are great served hot straight from the frying pan, but you can easily make them in advance and then reheat in the microwave or oven. They are also perfectly fine eaten cold.

You can make them in advance and freeze them for later.

How to store oat pancakes if you have any leftovers

Wrap and keep for up to 2-3 days in the fridge or freeze on the day you’ve made them. If frozen eat within 3 months.

How long can you store oatmeal pancakes in the fridge?

Whilst I normally eat pancakes within 1-3 days, these oatmeal pancakes have much longer shelf live. Because they are dairy free, they last well up to 3 days easily (at a push you could keep them in the fridge for up to 5 days).

Makes sure that you use a suitable container with a lid as they pancakes can dry out when they are left in the fridge without any cover.

Do oatmeal pancakes freeze well?

Yes, they do! Whilst these oatmeal pancakes are light in texture, they are also pretty sturdy and can be easily frozen. This is great if you have any leftovers or if you decide to make a big batch of these pancakes and freeze them for later.

Once made, make sure that your pancakes cool down first. If I know I’ll be freezing my pancakes later, I leave them to cool down on a cooling rack (like when you are cooling down bread). This ensures that the pancakes are not weighted down by another pancakes (like when you are normally stacking them up).

Next, place the pancakes individually on a flat tray lined with greaseproof paper and put the tray in the freezer (as it is – not covered). Let the pancakes freeze for about 1-2 hours until they are properly frozen, but don’t leave them for more than that as frost will start to develop on them.

Stack the pancakes in a suitable container and make sure that you place a greaseproof paper between each layer of the pancakes. This is quite important as this will prevent the pancakes from sticking and you can pull just one or two pancake at the time, instead of defrosting the whole batch.

Make sure that you use a suitable lid for your container and place it in the freezer. Your oatmeal pancakes should be fine in the freezer for a minimum of 3 months (but could last probably up to 6 months if needed). I usually eat mine within 1-3 months.

How to re-heat oatmeal pancakes

You can warm up your pancakes in the oven, microwave or even on the hob (stove).

I usually heat my oatmeal pancakes in the microwave, but sometimes I also use an oven (if it’s already been on and there is some residual heat).

Re-heating pancakes in a microwave

To use a microwave place the pancakes in the middle of your microwave and heat on full power for 10-20 seconds depending on the quantity. Check after 10 sec and add more time if needed. You can keep the pancakes stacked in a 3-4 to prevent them from overheating or burning.

Re-heating pancakes in the oven

You can also use the oven to re-heat your pancakes by heating the oven to about 180 Celsius (350 Fahrenheit) for 5 minutes – depending on the quantity and leaving the pancakes to warm through.

Re-heating pancakes over hot water

If you don’t have access to a microwave or oven, you can also warm up pancakes over a saucepan of hot water.

To warm up pancakes over hot water, first add some water (1 inch – 3 cm) to a medium size saucepan and place it on a medium heat.

You can get the water boiling if you want, but then lower the heat down to let the water simmer only. Add the pancakes – ideally spaced out) to a bowl or plate and place it on top of the saucepan. If you have something suitable, like a large lid or another light plastic bowl, cover the pancakes to make them warm up quicker.

Let the water to simmer for 5 minutes, by which time the pancakes should be nice and hot. This method will keep the pancakes nice and soft (and not dried out, which can sometimes happen when you heat them up in the oven).

Are these oatmeal pancakes healthy?

I’ve tried my best to make sure that these fluffy oatmeal pancakes are as healthy as they can be. Each pancake (based on 10 pancakes per bach of my recipe – where the pancake is about 3 inch or 8,5 cm in diameter) has only 55 calories (without any toppings) and 1 gram of fiber and 2 grams of protein.

If you prefer, you can lower the amount of sugar (or leave it out all together and increase the amount of cinnamon to make sure the pancakes still have some flavour), which would make these pancakes even healthier.

Don’t forget that it also depends on what you add on top of your pancakes when you serve them, so keep the sugar and calories down by using fresh fruit and yoghurt instead of sugar syrups, butter or peanut butter or chocolate spreads.

These pancakes are gluten and dairy free and can be made vegan too (see my substitutions notes above).

Full nutritional value of one oatmeal pancake

Calories: 54kcal, Carbohydrates: 9g, Protein: 2g, Fat: 1g, Saturated Fat: 1g, Trans Fat: 1g, Cholesterol: 16mg, Sodium: 34mg,Potassium: 35mg, Fiber: 1g, Sugar: 2g, Vitamin A: 51IU, Vitamin C: 1mg, Calcium: 32mg, Iron: 1mg

This blog post was originally written on 6 February 2021 and last updated on 21 March 2023