Fluffy Coconut Flour Pancakes
Edited to Add: You must check out the latest update on this recipe including tips and tricks.
When it comes to an easy breakfast I love pancakes. As you can probably tell from my soaked buckwheat pancakes and soaked, flour-free oatmeal pancakes. They are just so simple to cook – mix, ladle, flip, eat. No wonder our pioneer foremothers served them frequently on their trek out west.
But for those of us who don’t eat grains or are restricting our carbohydrates the smell of pancakes can feel a bit isolating. I’ve tried probably a half dozen coconut flour pancake recipes over the past year and have the same complaint with all of them – they are thin and eggy.
So I tweaked, tested, and tweaked again and finally came up with a pancake that is fluffy, not overly eggy, and pretty darn tasty.
My husband said these taste like donuts as he slathered them in coconut oil and honey. That’s coming from someone who does eat grains, is skeptical of coconut flour, and knows his way around a pancake. So when he said that I knew my recipe testing was over.
Finally, a coconut flour pancake worth eating.
Fluffly Coconut Flour Pancakes
Recipe Notes: Both cow and coconut milk work well in this recipe. You can also add cinnamon or fruit as desired. Just keep the pancakes small and watch them so they don’t burn.
Ingredients
- 4 eggs, room temperature
- 1 cup milk (raw cow’s or coconut both work)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon honey or a pinch of stevia
- 1/2 cup coconut flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- coconut oil or butter for frying
Directions
- Preheat griddle over medium-low heat. In a small bowl beat eggs until frothy, about two minutes. Mix in milk, vanilla, and honey or stevia.
- In a medium-sized bowl combine coconut flour, baking soda, and sea salt and whisk together. Stir wet mixture into dry until coconut flour is incorporated.
- Grease pan with butter or coconut oil. Ladle a few tablespoons of batter into pan for each pancake. Spread out slightly with the back of a spoon. The pancakes should be 2-3 inches in diameter and fairly thick. Cook for a few minutes on each side, until the tops dry out slightly and the bottoms start to brown. Flip and cook an additional 2-3 minutes.
- Serve hot with butter, coconut oil, honey, syrup, or fruit.
You can get coconut flour and coconut oil here:
For bulk orders of coconut oil we highly recommend:
I can’t use eggs. Can I substitute Chia Seeds? Does it have to be coconut milk or can I use the coconut creme from Tropical Traditions?
These were great and very fluffy! Thanks for the recipe!
excellent recipe. i made them with some frozen berries. am eating them now! delicious. very high on my satiety index!!
Caroline – So glad you like them. They are great with berries, aren’t they?
I’m cooking these as I type! I am using them as a pita bread substitute to go with our souvlaki tonight. I omitted the sweetener and vanilla since I want them to be more on the savory side, tasting the batter they seem a little salty. Could be me, I’m not much of a salter! Thanks for the great recipe!
Michelle – It could be me, since I seem to crave lots of salt.
I just love these…have had a craving for pancakes for a while now & was not able to have any due to giving up wheat & sugar etc… I have tried other wheat/grain free recipes before. They where always heavy & had a non-pancake texture. These where amazing. I will def make again!
I just tried the pancakes this morning and they are awesome! I was really surprised how light but filling they were. I made half the recipe for myself and I feel I am ready to get going all morning long with my studying! Thank you so much for this recipe!
what is the coconut flour? Is it just ground up coconut?
Gavin
this recipe is so creative! i served them with agave syrup and it was delish! definitely great to have some more options in pancakes, with low carbs. I couldnt get mine to be quite as thick as they “should”,but keeping them small was the key, so i got sth b/n crepes and pancakes but the taste is what counts 🙂
Delicious!! I had mine with a smear of almond butter and fresh strawberries and the rest of the family had them with bananas and macadamia nuts I fried in butter. Needless to say there were no left-overs. Thanks for the fantastic recipe:)
I’m a pretty good cook and was surprised by the ratio of liquids to solids in this recipe. But, it looked good so I made it this morning and got … crepes! Thin as typing paper crepes. Tasty, but not pancakes. The batter is very thin and spreads out immediately. Not sure how others got a “fluffy” result. Now, I only have store milk, so is that the problem? I made the coconut flour from shredded coconut I can buy in our local (Baja) grocery store. This is not the only recipe I’ve seen for coconut flour where the amount of dry seems very small in relation to the liquids.
Melinda – I am guessing it is because you used homemade coconut flour. I believe that the coconut flour you can buy in the health food store has been stripped of its fat and has a very high fiber content, whereas shredded coconut is the whole coconut with fat intact, meaning that it has less fiber. That would result in not nearly as much moisture being absorbed, which would make your pancakes into crepes. Make sense? I would try it with regular old coconut flour to get a more accurate product.
Thanks, Shannon, I’ll have to try that when I can get to a US store.
How many pancakes does this recipe make?
Chris – About 12 smaller ones, but 3 is usually enough per person.
Do you think almond milk would work for these? It has way less carbs than regular milk but I also know that it doesn’t work for every recipe.
Love these pancakes. I added a little extra coconut flour to thicken that batter just a bit. This makes a big batch so if you are making them for 1 make sure to divide at least in 1/2 or 1/3. These are crazy good.
Great recipe! Great taste! I had a hard time too to get it fluffy like the pic.
I’m thinking that the baking soda I used is old n needing to be tossed. Or it could be been that I used agave nectar instead of honey?
These are delightful! I, too, was a little wary about the liquid to dry ration in the recipe, but give the coconut flour a minute to fully hydrate and, presto!, it’s pancake batter. I will say, the flipping can be tricky. The bottom is done way before the top is dry and the pancake can be flipped easily. Lower the heat and don’t worry about burning the bottom – it can take a lot of browning before it starts to be burnt.
I want to work in some toasted, dessicated coconut and make some sort of pineapple-mango compote.
The taste was pretty good, but like Melindas, mine were not thick or fluffy at all. Trying to flip them was mostly disastrous. I did use store bought coconut flour, so I don’t think that is the problem. I’m wondering if it was the milk because I didn’t have raw or coconut milk and used regular whole milk. Also think perhaps I didn’t beat the eggs long enough–my definition of frothy may be different than what is meant here.
Amy – I have found that higher-fat liquid is usually better. So coconut milk works well, very rich whole milk works well, or half and half is also a great option. Lower water content = fluffier pancakes.
Can you tell me what the pancakes consist of: fat, protein, carb and fiber?
I used original flavor almond milk and they still tasted fine, better than fine actually, these are by far the best pancakes I have ever tasted (coconut flour or otherwise!)
You should test this recipe again. It was much too salty! too bad, it ruined 4 costly bio eggs.
Just got approval from our nutritionist for coconut flour but the recipe on the bag wanted too many other ingredients that our son can’t have on his 20 carb per day diet for seizure control. He is a non-verbal autistic but had a great big smile for your recipe! Bless you for your time spent here:)
I printed this recipe quite awhile ago and wanted to let you know how much I have enjoyed it. I make it for everyone and everyone loves it, from my 83-year-old mom to my friend’s 6-year-old. I serve it with butter and low-sugar strawberry jam or with real maple syrup, and it is just fabulous. I have used cream thinned with water or half-and-half (to keep the carb count down) instead of milk and it is even fluffier. My sister wanted buttermilk so I tried that and it made the batter a bit too thin, but it still tasted wonderful!! Thank you so much for developing this and sharing it. And my diabetes thanks you as well!!!
Hello! Thanks so much for your delicious recipe. I made them this morning and theyve kept me full all day! I had a question – what is that on top of your pancakes? it looks tasty… My coconut oil doesnt look like that!
This look great. Maybe you already mentioned in above posts, but how many servings does this make approximately?!! Thanks!
Yum – Could you mix up just the dry ingredients (coconut flour, baking soda and salt) and keep it as a pancake mix? If so how long do you guess it would it keep?
Sonia – I would think so and really don’t see why not since it is the same ingredients as wheat pancakes – flour, soda, salt. You could probably keep it for months in a cool, dry place. Great idea!
I simply can not wait to try these tomorrow. Waking up on a Saturday knowing that pancakes are on the horizon…Yipeee!!! Thank you for sharing and your time and effort.
I don’t know what everyone’s on about…I used organic coconut flour and full fat coconut milk and ended up with a batter so thick I should have just baked a cake… I added ,more milk to thin it down…I just found the pancakes very grainy and as a person who has swallowing issues it is very hard to swallow. I think I’ll avoid this recipe…
i used coconut flour I found at the store and followed the recipe exactly and ended up with a thinner more crepe like batter, i even let the batter sit for a while to allow the coconut flour to absorb the liquid. tried both pancake and crepe and found the recipe to work much better for a sweet breakfast crepe.
loved the recipe and love the higher protein count in it.
Mallory – What milk-type did you use? I find that using a thicker milk like coconut or cultured buttermilk or yogurt produces a fluffier product. I should add some notes to the recipe. Thanks for your input!
Tried your coconut pancakes today, and since I didn’t have coconut flour, but just ground up coconut, they didn’t get thick and fluffy. I see someone else had this problem. But they were still delicious!!
I served them warm with a little butter and fresh strawberries. Really nice!
I will definitely buy some coconut flour and give these another try.
Made these with duck eggs instead of chicken eggs–I used 3 eggs since they are so much larger but still ended up a little “eggy”. I’ll try it again later in the week with just 2 duck eggs. This recipe is great for our sugar/gluten/yeast/chicken egg/dairy-free family (whew)–with a little more tweaking, I’m sure it’ll be a hit. They’re delicious with a berry compote. Thanks for posting it!
oh these look Yummy – I have some coconut flour on order from Azure, can’t wait till it comes so I can try these!
Thanks for the great information on using coconut flour and the great looking recipes!
I have not tried this recipe but I have made really great blueberry muffins with coconut flour. The are really good!.
After reading the post I think I will try to make thise using cultured coconut milk. It is thick; sort of like yorgurt. I will let you know how it comes out.
this question was already asked, but i wanted to reiterate it…
is there an egg-free version? what can eggs be replaced with? even if they aren’t quite as fluffy…i’d like to try! 🙂
Sydney – I am guessing you could try a flax or chia egg substitute. So mix 1 tablespoon flax or chia meal with 3 tablespoons of water and allow to set up before baking. That mixture will replace 1 egg.
These are GREAT!
I cant have milk so I used Homemade Kefirmilk, DELICIOUS!
Thanks for this simple recipe! I am just learning about cooking gluten and sugar free and it is such a challenge. I made the recipe exact except I used NuNaturals vanilla extract stevia, 2 tsp (Instead of vanilla extract and honey/stevia combination). Everything else was exact. It came out kind of salty so I would do it again with maybe only 1/4 tsp or even a pinch of sea salt. They were perfect otherwise! I don’t think the vanilla extract/stevia would have contributed to the saltiness but maybe that was your preference? Or I am sensitive to salt. Thank you thank you!
Losing it – I am not sure. I tend to have a taste for salt so perhaps those who are more sensitive wouldn’t care for as much as I do. Glad you liked them!
Just another kudo. Made these for the first time today – followed recipe pretty much exactly (although used regular whole milk instead of raw or pastured). Turned out great! Cooked in butter on a cast iron skillet and had little to no problems with flipping them. None of the other issues others have had with batter being eggy or pancakes being grainy either. I did let the batter sit a few minutes which really helped it thicken up nicely.
All in all, these are pretty much the best pancakes I’ve ever had. Whole family picky 7 year old and carb-addicted, grain-eating wife) really liked them.
Thanks!!!!
I just made these this morning, very eggy, and I used 3 eggs, since they were huge farm eggs. Also, I had my heat on medium and they still got almost black right away. They were slightly fluffy, I think a lot of people probably have old baking soda. And I felt like this recipe had too much salt, salt was the main flavor.
Just made these today and LOVE them. I can’t have grains of ANY kind right now, so this completely fulfills my carb cravings. These actually taste better than many regular pancakes I’ve had, and the recipe isn’t super-complicated. I just made sure the eggs were actually room temperature and beat them quite awhile. They turned out perfect! Thank-you for this recipe!!!
I’m just wondering if the people who think there is too much salt are cooking in salted butter. If you are cooking in unsalted butter, or coconut oil it won’t be so salty, but if you are cooking in a salted oil, reduce the salt in the batter.
I haven’t made these yet, but I’ll let you know how they turn out cooked in coconut oil and made with skim milk as that’s all I have (I think I’ll reduce the amount of milk though).