Super basic, ridiculously easy, crazy delicious Vegan Gluten Free Pancakes. They are beautifully golden, fluffy on the inside, irresistibly crunchy on the outside, with a lovely gentle sweetness. You need only 4 ingredients (plus a pinch of salt) and there is no batter resting time so they can be mixed up & on your plate in record time!
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I’ll tell you a little story. I woke up one morning craving some pancakes for breakfast. Went to the pantry and found a little random jar of flour.
A random jar of flour that I had not labelled. I’m good at doing the not labelling thing in the pantry (and the freezer).
I had absolutely no clue what type of flour it was, but thought I’d make pancakes with it regardless.
Batter looked nice. Poured it in the pan.
Magic happened.
Oh my these pancakes are so good. They might not be as thick as my Vegan Banana Pancakes, but what they lack in height, they made up for in taste and texture.
They are everything you want and need in a pancake.
Golden and slightly crispy on the outside, and super fluffy on the inside, with no gumminess or damp insides like many vegan pancake recipes that you find when searching Google or Pinterest.
They also have a really lovely, mellow sweetness. And what’s really nice about them is they are super light. Much lighter than pancakes made with regular all-purpose flour. You don’t walk away after eating them feeling really stuffed and weighed down.
They are my new absolutely favourite pancake recipe and I have been making them on repeat.
Add a blob of vegan butter and a drizzle of maple syrup and it’s like all your perfect vegan breakfasts have come at once.
Oh, and luckily I did manage to find out what the mystery flour was.
It was corn flour.
WHAT IS CORN FLOUR?
Corn flour is a fine flour made from ground dried corn kernels.
This is the corn flour I used to make this recipe but other brands are available:
This corn flour is not to be confused with Masa Harina which is made from corn that has been soaked in lime water, then rinsed, dried and ground.
Also not to be confused with corn starch (corn flour as it’s known in the UK), which is also made from corn but is produced by grinding, washing and drying the endosperm of the corn only, hence the reason it’s really starchy and great for thickening.
So the message is, make sure you get the right kind of corn flour. Here in BC it’s available just about everywhere, so hopefully it will be where you are too. If not there’s always Amazon.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN CORN FLOUR
If you have a pantry full of corn meal, it is really easy to make your own corn flour from it. They are basically the same thing. One is just more finely ground than the other.
All you need to be able to do this yourself is a blender.
I have a Blendtec like this:
It makes flour from coarse corn meal in less than a minute.
- All you need to do is:
- Add the corn meal to the blender
- Blend on high until it looks fine
- Sieve
Use the finely sieved part as your flour, and save the courser bits left inside the sieve for another recipe, like cornbread.
You can use the same method to make flour from other things like oats or quinoa too.
WHAT DO I NEED TO MAKE THESE PANCAKES?
No special equipment is needed to make these pancakes. All you need is:
a medium mixing bowl
and either a griddle, a skillet or a frying pan to cook the pancakes in.
And these are the ingredients you need (note that the sugar is optional):
As well as being vegan and gluten free the batter is also oil-free.
If you have a really good pan or griddle you will be able to get away without using any oil to cook them, although if you aren’t following an oil-free diet, I strongly recommend using some oil as then you will get ultimate outside crispiness going on which is super good.
HOW TO MAKE VEGAN GLUTEN FREE PANCAKES
SEE MY VIDEO FOR A VISUAL GUIDE. FOR INGREDIENTS & FULL INSTRUCTIONS PLEASE SEE THE RECIPE CARD AT THE END OF THIS POST
This has got to be one of the easiest and quickest pancakes recipes to make EVER.
Unlike most pancake recipes, there is no resting time for the batter. It really is a case of mixing the ingredients together and cooking the pancakes immediately.
Here’s how:
STEP 1
Add all of the dry ingredients to a bowl.
STEP 2
Whisk them together.
STEP 3
Add the milk and vanilla and whisk together until smooth.
STEP 4
Warm a griddle or a pan and cook the pancakes, turning them over when bubbles appear.
The whole process takes less than 10 minutes…unless you decide to make heaps and heaps of them that is.
I will not judge … ?
HOW TO SERVE MY VEGAN AND GLUTEN FREE CORN FLOUR PANCAKES
The very best way to eat these pancakes is with vegan butter and maple syrup.
They are also really good with berries, particularly strawberries or blueberries (try adding a handful of blueberries to the batter)!
And you can even go for a more savory feel by adding some corn kernels to the batter, then serve with vegan sausage and vegan bacon.
And so to recap:
- Vegan, gluten-free pancakes that taste amazing!
- A batter that is totally oil-free
- Super simple to make
- Fluffy
- Crispy
- With a lovely natural sweetness from the corn flour.
Weekend brunches just got a whole lot better!
For more vegan pancakes recipes, check out these great options:
- Vegan Sweet Potato Pancakes
- Gingerbread Pancakes
- Vegan English Pancakes
- Vegan Banana Pancakes
- Vegan Spelt Pancakes
- Healthy Oil-Free Pancakes
And if you love this recipe, please do check out my cookbook, and subscribe to my email list for a fabulous FREE eCookbook featuring my top 10 recipes. Being on the list means you will be first to see my new recipes and you’ll be kept in the loop on all things new and exciting too!
Vegan Gluten Free Pancakes
Ingredients
- 165 g / 1 very packed cup corn flour (sometimes called maize flour or maize atta , Scoop it into the cup and pack it down tight with a spoon until you can't possibly fit anymore in. Note that corn flour is not masa harina, or corn starch or what's known as cornflour in the UK. It needs to be fine flour made from dried corn kernels, like corn meal but much finer. Bob's Red Mill is a popular, widely available brand. See notes in the post above for more info and tips for making your own.
- 3 teaspoons / 1 tablespoon baking powder
- ½ tsp fine salt
- 4 tsp sugar , optional
- 4 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 220 mls / ¾ cup + 2 tbsp + 2 tsp unsweetened milk of choice
Instructions
- To a medium bowl, add the corn flour, baking powder, salt and optional sugar. Whisk them together.
- Add the milk and vanilla to the dry ingredients and mix them together well.
- Heat a griddle, skillet or frying pan over a medium/low heat. Add a drizzle of mildly flavoured oil or some vegan butter and allow to melt/spread around the pan. If you have a good non stick pan/griddle you can cook them oil-free.
- Once hot add the batter about 1/3 cup (80 mls) at a time. Allow them to cook undisturbed, until they are starting to set around the edges and bubbles start forming on the top. Flip gently and cook them on the other side for about 1 minute or until slightly golden.
- Remove from the pan and serve immediately.
Long time vegan, creator of A Virtual Vegan & author of the book 
beth says
Hi Mel. Fingers crossed but I should be able to pick up my special order of BRM gluten-free corn flour at the store tomorrow.
With that being said, I have a question about the measurements. On the back of the BRM mill bag (on their site) they have 1/4 cup weighing in at 31 grams which would be 124 grams for 1 cup. You call for 165 grams, a very packed cup of corn flour.
I always spoon in my flour and level off with a knife but that’s definitely not packing in the flour…..
I do have a scale but it only does ounces and pounds and not grams. Would your 165 grams be equivalent to 5.8 ounces? That’s what google tells me but I always end up with recipe troubles when I convert grams to ounces. I definitely want to end up with lovely pancakes like you made and not thin crepes which could happen if I don’t get the measurements right.
Any advice for me?
A Virtual Vegan says
Spooning into the cup and leveling off is definitely how measuring flour should usually be done, but with this, I scoop it in and pack it down tight with a spoon until I can’t possibly fit anymore into the cup. That’s what I mean by a packed cup here. I’ve just clarified that in the recipe too in case anyone else isn’t sure what I mean.
165g is definitely 5.8 oz or 0.36 lb. I personally like using grams when creating recipea because they allow you to be very, very precise when measuring. More precise than ozs or lbs can be.
In this case, it wouldn’t hurt to go to 6 oz of corn flour if that is easier to measure on the scale as the difference is negligible and it will just make the batter a tiny teeny bit thicker.
Converting the weights from grams to oz shouldn’t make a difference, unless of course it was a recipe using fl oz (fluid ounces) to measure volume and not straight ounces that measure weight. Those 2 can be very different.
I really hope you enjoy the pancakes!
beth says
Mel,
Alas, the BRM gf corn flour was not at the store, someday soon I hope!
You are such a rockstar for replying to comments in such a timely manner and for leaving such lengthy feedback. Your comments and advice are much appreciated. Thank you so much.
beth says
Well since writing to you I’ve acquired the gluten-free corn flour, gotten the flu, am nearly recovered, but now have developed a soy allergy :(
That being said, I’ve switched to rice milk and it’s tastes nice in my cereal but it does seem “thinner” than soy milk.
I haven’t had a chance yet to use rice milk in any cooking or baking recipes yet.
Do you think rice milk would work as the “unsweetened milk of choice” for this recipe? (I cannot sub almond or cashew milk because of my nut allergy. I might could do oat milk if I can find gf certified oat milk. Hemp and pea milk are just too weird IMHO.)
Also, just because I’m curious and your kitchen science-y explanations are so interesting, why is there no resting period at all for this pancake batter?
For reference in the post above you said:
Thanks and have a lovely New Year.
A Virtual Vegan says
When you use regular flour it has gluten and you rest the batter so it relaxes and becomes more tender after you’ve mixed it up. With these pancakes there is no gluten so you can get straight on with cooking them.
I would imagine rice milk would be fine. I’d just use a couple of tablespoons less if it’s really, really thin like water consistency. I’ve never bought rice milk so have no idea how thin it is. Hope that helps!
beth says
Hi Mel. I’m recently gluten-free so I do appreciate that you share some gluten-free recipes on your blog.
I’ve been looking in my area (USA) and I can’t find the corn flour anywhere — all I can find it BRM corn flour/masa harina as it has the lime ingredient in it.
Thankfully I have found BRM medium ground corn meal — you mention above we can make our own corn flour from it by whirring it around in a blender. I don’t have a blender but I do have a small Kitchen-Aid food processor. Do you think that would work?
Melanie McDonald says
Hi Beth. Sorry you’re having issues finding it. Bob’s Red Mill does make corn flour as well as the masa harina one. It looks like this https://www.bobsredmill.com/shop/flours-and-meals/gluten-free-corn-flour.html . Maybe try a different store. I just checked the USA Walmart and they carry it so hopefully your local one does. I find that it’s usually in the “healthy food” aisle at ours. Failing that Amazon sell it plus several other brands too.
You can make it yourself though as you read, but a food processor won’t do it. You need a high powdered blender to get it fine enough. Hope that helps!
Beth says
Such a bummer to hear that my food processor won’t finely grind the medium ground cornmeal into a powder. (Thankfully I didn’t buy it.) I was also hoping to make my own oat flour by whirring up BRM old fashioned oats in my food processor, it sounds like maybe that won’t work either? :(
I have checked a few stores but not Walmart. I didn’t even know Walmart carried BRM stuff in the stores. I’ll have to check online and see if my local store carries the corn flour. Many thanks for your detective work! (Our local healthy/hippie store surprisingly does not carry it)
Dianne says
They taste amazing. Like cornbread and are so soft and fluffy. Our new favorite. Kids loved them!
Melanie McDonald says
Thank you Dianne. I’m really pleased you all enjoyed them!
Maryan says
Hi, can your homemade vegan butter be used for greasing the pan.
Melanie McDonald says
You can, but it might go a little weird in the pan. I think when it gets fried, the water in it evaporates and the residual almonds clump up a bit. It still tastes absolutely fine though, it just looks a little funny. So it’s up to you.
Maryan says
Thank you so much for getting back to me.
Prue says
OMG just made them. So good!! I can’t believe how simple they are either!
A Virtual Vegan says
Yay! I’m so pleased you enjoyed them Prue. Thanks for stopping by to leave feedback. It’s much appreciated!