Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Pancakes

So, I don't know about you, but I LOVE Pinterest. My love for Pinterest has quickly surpassed my love for Facebook. I love perusing through the creative pictures, recipes, arts and crafts out there on the web. What a great way to organize everything I love. 

I've been using this tool as a way to organize recipes for my family, myself (I'm a no carb/sugar person), and especially for Doodle. Well, the other day I found a fabulous pancake recipe for Doodle here. It looked delicious - and who wouldn't love the thought of cookie dough pancakes? Well, I didn't have cashews on hand, nor did I have amaranth flour, arrowroot, or brown rice flour on hand. (I live in the middle of nowhere, after all.) So, I adjusted the recipe to use the allergy friendly ingredients I did have on hand. Here goes:

1/4 Cup Sweet Rice Flour

1/4 Cup Pea Protein Powder

1/2 Cup Sorghum Flour
1/2 Tsp Baking Powder
1 Tsp Baking Soda
1/4 Cup AppleSauce
2 Tbsp Agave Nectar
1/4 Cup Vegetable Oil
Ghiradelli Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips

1. Preheat griddle and pre-season with oil. Mix together with a spatula the dry ingredients.
2. Add applesauce, agave nectar, and vegetable oil. 
3. Stir in chocolate chips. 
4. Place a small scoop of batter on griddle - the dough should be thicker than regular pancake batter. Flip when golden brown and repeat. 

I didn't make the marshmallow cream - these pancakes were sweet enough on their own. So, we added some pure maple syrup and Doodle enjoyed! I made the entire batch of pancakes and froze the leftovers for breakfast during the week. 

Math Madness

Well, we are on the downhill side of first grade - where has the year gone? It seems that time really does fly when you have kids in school. This year, that has truly been the case. Every year that Doodle starts a new grade, I worry about how she will keep up with her peers, will she make friends, will she fit in on the playground, can she keep up. This year was no exception.

Doodle, of course, has surprised me and done exceptionally well in school. She really loves it. This year, however, she has met her arch nemesis - Math! She has struggled all year, but still scored well on most of her tests and came home with B-, B, and B+. It seemed she was improving, that is, until this quarter hit. She has brought home 2 F's in a row! On her quarter review test, she missed simple things that she had mastered months before. I think that I was more devastated than she was when she brought home the test. My heart just breaks that she has to struggle so hard in this subject. 

So, as with most things, I'm on a mission to make it better. I felt like we had tried most things: flashcards (didn't help), online games (she liked, but didn't help make progress), a Toy Story math book (helped some), and I even resorted to bribery. So, I decided to get out my Cri-Cut machine and make my own version of flashcards. First, I cut out some tags, then glued numbers to the tags and different colored stars representing the numbers to give her visual cues. I started real simple: 1+2, 3+1, 4+1, just to help her get through her Rocket Math timed tests. Then, I created tags with numbers from 0-9 with touch points that represent the number and help her count. I'm teaching her to use the number to help her figure out the math problem. The number 3, for example, had three different points, so she can use the points to count and come up with the answer.  This seems to be helping.

Also, a friend suggested we try hide and seek math. I hide 5 flashcards and she has 5 minutes to find the flashcards, bring them to me, and give me the answer. She really likes this game and it seems to be helping. I imagine, however, that we will continue this routine right through the summer months so we don't take a step backwards. I know second grade will be even more challenging with math.