Bite sized, mess-free, pieces of nutritious, fluffy, chocolaty, goodness that make both mother and daughter happy.

My daughters love pancakes. But since they are both under the age of 5, they make quite a frightening mess eating them with syrup. After they have finished, I have to clean up sticky syrup off the table the chairs and sometimes toys and books. It is a nightmare and makes me reluctant.

They want pancakes a lot more often than I do. But most pancake recipes produce 4 pancakes with a single egg and that is too much for them. Also, I would like them to eat a whole egg for breakfast, but they are too full after one or at most 2 pancakes, eating at most half an egg.

Over the last year, I have tweaked the pancake recipe in many ways, and finally come up with something, I think is optimum for kids. These are mildly sweet, chocolate flavoured, whole wheat, pancakes, where each pancake is made with 1 whole egg. Nutritious, tasty and mess-free!

So without further ado lets get to the recipe.

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons whole wheat flour (atta)

• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder

• 1 tablespoon castor sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

• 2 tablespoons milk

• 1 egg

• 1/2 tablespoon olive oil

Procedure

Put ingredients 1 through 4 in a larger coffee mug and mix with a fork till all the powders are evenly mixed.

Add remaining ingredients, except the olive oil, and stir vigorously with a fork to get a thick, frothy brown mixture. Make sure there are no lumps or dry ingredients stuck along the walls of the mug.

Now put the olive oil to heat on a non-stick pan. I use a ceramic non-stick pan, a new discovery and I love it. In my opinion, it is much better than Teflon coated pans.Let the olive oil heat up for half a minute on high heat and then simmer the stove. Pour the entire pancake batter on to the pan and cover and let it cook.

When the top is not runny any more, flip it and cook for another half a minute.

The little holes are a good indicator that the pancake is fluffy.

Serve the fluffy pancake on a plate. You can cut it in to little pieces to make it easier for the kids to eat. No need for cutlery. They can just pick up each piece and eat. Of course if your kids like cutlery they can use a fork. The pancake is already chocolate flavoured and slightly sweet so there no need for messy syrup. You can add more sugar if your kids would like it sweeter. My kids prefer it bitter sweet.