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We've been experimenting with using almond milk as a substitute for actual milk in my household. The biggest failure so far has been with pancakes. The pancakes taste okay, but they are far stickier in the pan than batter made with milk, scorch more easily, and don't brown well. What can I do to get a more satisfactory pancake with almond milk?

rumtscho
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philosodad
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    Have you also removed/replaced butter in the batter? – overslacked Mar 10 '11 at 05:16
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    are you just trying to leave out the dairy altogether? or do you only want to use almond milk? Soymilk cooks much closer to real milk in this application although it's not a one for one replacement. – sarge_smith Mar 10 '11 at 06:07
  • @sarge_smith I just happen to have almond milk in the fridge and no dairy milk. – philosodad Mar 10 '11 at 21:57
  • @overslacked - I'm still using butter in the batter, if I switched to oil I can switch to sesame, olive, or canola. – philosodad Mar 10 '11 at 21:58
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    You might find that thinning it down with water helps, worth trying on a couple if the situation comes around again. – Orbling Mar 12 '11 at 22:03
  • @Orbling: I did that (about 4parts am to 1part h20), and I also switched the butter for oil and used about half a tablespoon more oil than called for (3.5 tbs). Very temperature sensitive but I got a nice golden cake. Still a bit flat, though. – philosodad Mar 13 '11 at 01:10
  • @philosodad: Where I come from, the pancakes (crepes) are supposed to be entirely flat, lol. – Orbling Mar 13 '11 at 07:08
  • I recently made these vegan pancakes with almond milk and they cooked up just fine (quite unusual for eggless, milk-less pancakes)- http://theveganzombie.com/?p=584 I'd post this as an answer, but I don't know what about it makes them different. Maybe it was the old cider I used (almost certainly had a lot of yeast in it) – MatthewMartin May 19 '13 at 01:47
  • a little orange juice with the thinning water will give some umpph the leavening agents for a fluffy pancake. – Alaska Man Mar 05 '17 at 02:26

4 Answers4

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I use almond milk as a milk replacement, almost exclusively. I was about to say when I made pancakes with almond milk they turned out fine, when I realized I made Buttermilk pancakes instead of just regular pancakes. I compared recipes for normal and buttermilk and noted that there was far less milk called for in the Buttermilk recipe (makes sense).

In short: you may try finding a recipe that does not call for so much milk, such as a buttermilk pancake recipe.

For reference, the recipes I compared had 1 1/4 cups of milk in the original recipe versus 1/4 cup in the Buttermilk recipe.

GeneratorHalf
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I just used this recipe from Silk and they turned out perfectly. (I am not affiliated with Silk, I was just looking for a substitution which is how I stumbled upon this site and your question)

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour or whole wheat pastry flour
1-2 Tbsp sugar or honey
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup Silk almondmilk, any flavor but Chocolate
2 Tbsp canola oil or melted butter
1 egg 

1. Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a small bowl.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together Silk, oil and egg.
3. Add flour mixture to egg mixture and stir just to moisten—a few lumps are fine.
4. Cook pancakes on a griddle over medium heat.
5. Serve immediately.
SourDoh
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Barbara
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Have you considered using soy milk? I used soy milk for making my pancakes this year for the first time and they worked out great. I followed this recipe from Delia Smith -http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/basicpancakeswithsuga_66226

The just opted to use soy milk and used oil instead of butter. My partner couldn't notice any difference in taste compared to previous years. Although I didn't try one that wasn't flavoured with lemon and brown sugar.

Also, I've found that generally if you leave pancakes in the pan a little longer than you think necessary before flipping they come away from the bottom of the pan far easier, especially if using a non-stick pan.

nixy
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    While I agree that soy milk is probably a better choice, the question did specifically ask how to improve the results with almond milk, not for other substitutions. Generally those types of responses get posted as comments. – Aaronut Mar 10 '11 at 16:29
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    Fair point but this answer does offer a pragmatic suggestion for a milk-substitute recipe. As there are, as yet, no other answers then surely this answer is better than nothing for the OP? – David Neale Mar 11 '11 at 20:43
  • Not really. Almond milk is what is in my refrigerator. – philosodad Mar 13 '11 at 01:08
  • Although oil instead of butter did help a lot. – philosodad Mar 13 '11 at 13:58
  • I wrote my suggestion under the impression it might be helpful for future reference if you weren't getting on with almond milk. – nixy Mar 13 '11 at 17:47
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I used leftover "unsweetened" almond milk just now, to make griddlecakes using a Fanny Farmer recipe that our family has enjoyed for years. Recipes mentioned above are almost identical. I happened on this website while eating said pancakes, seeking more information about the use of almond milk.

I figured that, like buttermilk, I should add about 1/4 teaspoon of bicarb (baking soda) to the two teaspoons of baking powder required. I forgot to put in the two tablespoons of sugar - we usually only use a pinch or two instead anyway, because the pancakes are otherwise too sweet for us. The batter looked fine and the cooking was a little slow. They did not rise a whole lot but that is normal for us if we alter the ingredients. Upon eating with maple syrup and butter, our usual way, they had a firmish skin, a little soggy inside and had that faint salty metallic taste that comes with the use of baking soda. My conclusion is that almond milk lacks the acid of buttermilk, so no extra baking soda (on top of the two teaspoons of baking powder) should have been used. I also think at least a pinch of sugar is still necessary - possibly to react with the baking powder in some way, but I always thought that unsweetened almond milk of the long-life variety tastes sweetish anyway (can't stand the stuff). I'm not sure about the pinch of salt I added - a lot less than what was asked for in the recipe - the pancakes tasted a tiny bit salty but maybe a bit is necessary to help the rising too.

Anyway, hope this helps. People should also not confuse pancakes with crepes - the latter are the thin flat ones usually served with lemon and sugar. I also would have thought that soy and almond milk would be similar, at least the long-life varieties of same, but the person did specifically ask about almond milk.

A Ryan
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