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If you are looking for a tasty and nutritious breakfast option, try making my 4 ingredient fluffy millet pancakes! This millet flour pancakes recipe is vegan, oil-free, gluten-free, and lectin-free.
These golden, fluffy millet pancakes are calling your name. They are easy as can be to make with four ingredients and about 10 minutes time (start to finish) to make. I am crazy about them.
I have had millet pancakes on my recipe development “to do” list for about 8 months. I tried several times, with the goal of a super simple, all millet flour batter.
Oy. Each version was awful. I managed to create multiple renditions of pancakes that were at once both stiff and crumbly. I nearly gave up.
But then, a revelation! While developing my recipe for millet naan, one of my mistakes gave me the answer for my millet pancakes: combine the millet with flaxseed meal. Not a little bit. A LOT of flaxseed meal.
A few test batches later, these fluffy millet pancakes were the result. They taste like classic pancakes (so delicious!) and are amazing with all of your favorite toppings.
Table of Contents
- Recipe Benefits
- Health Benefits Of Millet
- Ingredients
- Step by Step Instructions
- Step One: Whisk the Dry Ingredients
- Step Two: Add the Wet Ingredients
- Step Three: Heat the Skillet
- Step Four: Portion the Millet Pancake Batter
- Step Five: Cook the Millet Pancakes
- Step Six: Serve
- Storage
- Suggested Toppings
- Flavor Variations
- FAQ
- Related Recipes
- Fluffy Millet Pancakes (Vegan, Oil-Free, GF) Recipe
Recipe Benefits
These filling, fluffy millet pancakes are:
- Made with 4 ingredients (excluding water & optional salt)
- Vegan (egg-free, dairy-free)
- Gluten-free
- Oil-free
- Lectin-free
- Quick and easy to make
- Frugal
- 3 grams fiber per pancake
- 3 grams protein per pancake
Health Benefits Of Millet
Millet is a tiny, pale yellow and almost perfectly spherical grain (although technically a seed). It is most familiar to North Americans as birdseed, but is an ancient crop that dates back to 600 BC in China, where it was once considered one of the five sacred crops and was, for thousands of years, the primary grain of Northern China.
Millet was later cultivated all over Northern Europe, Egypt and India and is widely used in African,Asian and Eastern European cuisines.
When it comes to nutrition, millet is a slam dunk. It is gluten-free, lectin-free and easy to digest in general. High in fiber and protein, it helps keep the digestive tract operating smoothly. In addition, millet is one of the only grains that is alkalizing to the body.
You can even make millet into a high protein dinner with just 2 ingredients–check out my High Protein Millet Nuggets. Go millet!
Ingredients
The exact amounts of each ingredient are indicated in the recipe card at the end of the post. Toggle between US Customary (volume) and Metric (weights) for preferred measurement option.
- millet flour
- flaxseed meal (I used golden flaxseed meal)
- baking powder (certified gluten-free, as needed)
- coconut sugar (see notes for options)
I recommend adding a small amount of salt (1/8 teaspoon), but it is optional/adjustable. You will also need water (I use filtered tap water) to mix up the pancake batter.
Pro Tip
I recommend using golden flaxseed meal, as opposed to the more common dark brown flaxseed meal. It has a far more mild flavor, which, when combined with the millet flour, results in pancakes with a classic, traditional pancake flavor.
The pancakes will still be delicious if you use dark flaxseed meal!
Step by Step Instructions
Note that the complete directions are also in the recipe card below.
Step One: Whisk the Dry Ingredients
In a large mixing bowl, whisk the millet flour, flaxseed meal, baking powder, coconut sugar, and optional salt.
Step Two: Add the Wet Ingredients
Add the water, mixing until blended into a smooth batter. The batter will look very loose at first, but will thicken soon after.
Step Three: Heat the Skillet
Let the batter stand for a minute, to thicken. Meanwhile, heat a nonstick griddle or large nonstick skillet over medium heat.
Step Four: Portion the Millet Pancake Batter
Once the griddle or skillet is hot, ladle in the batter (3 to 4 tablespoons) to form pancakes that are approximately 4 inches (10 cm) in diameter.
Step Five: Cook the Millet Pancakes
Cook the pancakes for 2 to 4 minutes until several bubbles form on the surface. Using a spatula carefully flip each pancake. Cook the other side for 2 to 4 minutes until cooked through.
Step Six: Serve
Serve the fluffy millet pancakes, hot from the skillet, with your favorite toppings, such as maple syrup and fresh fruit.
Breakfast is served!
Storage
Extra millet flour pancakes can be stored for later eating. Store the completely cooled pancakes in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days or the freeze for up to six months.
Rewarm the pancakes in a microwave (10 to 15 second intervals at a time) or over very low heat in a skillet.
Suggested Toppings
- Syrups: e.g., warm maple syrup, agave nectar, brown rice syrup, or the liquid syrup / sweetener of your choice.
- Fruits and berries: e.g., blueberries, raspberries, diced strawberries, sliced bananas, diced apples or pears, dice peaches.
- Powdered sugar: (check out my grain-free powdered sugar; it takes a minute to make)
- Nuts or seeds: e.g., sliced almonds, chopped toasted pecans, green pumpkin seeds (pepitas), or hemp hearts.
- Chocolate: warm chocolate syrup, or stir a few tablespoons of chocolate chips or chopped chocolate into the batter before cooking.
- Nondairy yogurt, nondairy sour cream or coconut cream
Flavor Variations
You can change the flavor of the millet pancakes with some easy stir-ins, such as:
- Spices: Add 1/4 to 3/4 teaspoon of your favorite spice, such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, allspice, ginger, or pumpkin pie spice. Or add a combination of spices (no more than 1 teaspoon total).
- Berries: Add up to 1/2 cup of blueberries or raspberries into the pancake batter.
- Nuts or Seeds: Add up to 1/3 cup chopped nuts or seeds, such as walnuts, pecans, peanuts, pepitas, or sunflower seeds into the pancake batter.
- Extracts or Zests: Add a tsp vanilla extract, almond extract or lemon extract into the pancake batter.. Or add one to two teaspoons of finely grated lime zest, lemon zest or orange zest.
FAQ
- How should I store the millet flour pancakes? Store cooled, leftover millet pancakes in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days or the freezer for up to 6 months.
- Can I use milk instead of water in the recipe? Yes! Feel free to swap in an equal amount of your preferred nondairy milk (e.g., oat milk, almond milk, soy milk) for the water.
- What can I use in place of coconut sugar? The coconut sugar can be replaced by an equal amount of maple syrup, brown sugar, granulated sugar, or agave nectar. The sugar can also be omitted, as desired.
- Can I substitute another flour for the millet flour? I do not recommend it. I have only tested this recipe using millet flour.
- Is there a substitute for the flaxseed meal? I have not tested the millet flour pancakes recipe with any other ingredients. The recipe may work with an equal amount of ground chia seeds.
Related Recipes
Fluffy Millet Pancakes (Vegan, Oil-Free, GF)
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup millet flour
- 1/2 cup flaxseed meal, (I recommend golden flaxseed meal)
- 1.5 teaspoons baking powder, (certified gluten-free, as needed)
- 2 teaspoons coconut sugar, (see notes for options)
- 1/8 teaspoon salt, optional, but recommended
- 1.25 cups water, (see notes for options)
Instructions
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk the millet flour, flaxseed meal, baking powder, coconut sugar, and optional salt.
- Add the water, mixing until blended into a smooth batter. The batter will look loose when first mixed.
- Let the batter stand for a minute, to thicken. Meanwhile, heat a nonstick griddle or large nonstick skillet over medium heat.
- Once the griddle or skillet is hot, ladle in the batter (3 to 4 tablespoons) to form pancakes that are approximately 4 inches (10 cm) in diameter.
- Cook for 2 to 4 minutes until several bubbles form on the surface. Using a spatula carefully flip each pancake. Cook the other side for 2 to 4 minutes until cooked through.
- Serve with your favorite toppings, such as maple syrup and fresh fruit.
Excellent!
Hurrah, so glad they were a success, YL!
These are AMAZING! I love the flavor of the pancakes and the amount of nutrients packed into each one. I did have a problem with cooking them though. I used oil on my griddle and they stuck to the pan. I wasted a lot of batter because I could not get the pancakes to separate from the pan. I ended up lining a sheet pan with a silicone liner/sleeve and baked them at 350 for 8 min, flipped them, and baked for another 6 minutes. They were perfect and the clean-up was a breeze. I will definitely make these again. Thanks for the recipe!
Umm, Christina, the sheet pan solution is brilliant! I love that! I am definitely going to follow your lead next time I make these.
Regarding the sticking: Was your griddle nonstick? You definitely need a nonstick surface for these (I use a nonstick ceramic pan). Or use a nonstick cooking spray. I am so glad you found a s9lution and love the pancakes. Many thanks, agin, for sharing your sheet pan tip!
No, I used cast iron. Obviously it’s time to re-season it! =)
These are the best pancakes I’ve ever tried! Topped with homemade nut butter and maple syrup. Wow
I am so so happy your like these, Stephanie! That is seriously high praise, thank you. Enjoy! 🙂
These pancakes were a hit with my family for our breakfast for dinner crowd lol 😆. Thanks 🙂
I am so glad they were a hit, Jacien!
I have a packet millet seeds but have never seed millet flour where I live. Can I grind the uncooked millet seeds in my Omniblend to make millet flour?
Hi Janine,
Absolutely! In fact, I recommend gringin your own to ensure it is fresh (store the flour in the refrigerator or freezer, it can turn bitter if the oils in the flour gets rancid).
Hi Camilla! My body can’t tolerate flax or chia. Do you think equal weight/volume of psyllium would work in this recipe?
Hi Natalia,
I am not sure if psyllium will work here. The flax (or chia) meal adds structure, yes, but also lightness and tenderness (for the latter, in the form of healthy fats). That’s not to say it cannot work at all, but it would take some experimenting–the flax meal cannot be replaced with an equal amount of psyllium, it would be super thick and dense. If you decide to experiment, I suggest testing with a much smaller amount of psyllium at a time, and add some fat to the recipe (either a small amount of oil in place of the water, or whole fat coconut milk in place of some of the water). Cheers.
Delicious & nutritious! Though I don’t think I could call my pancakes “fluffy”. We did enjoy them 👍🏻.
I’m so glad you liked them Jacqueline ☺️
Thank you so much for the simple millet recipes, I’m trying to incorporate it into my diet regularly. These pancakes are wonderful, very filling and simple. I’m going to try making blueberry pancakes.
I’m so glad you like the recipe, Mariska!
I did all the measurements exactly, but when I added the water it was very thick. I had to add a lot more water to get it to the right consistency of pancake batter.
The pancakes turned out fine with the extra water, but I can’t understand what went wrong? Looking at the comment, it seems like no one else has had this problem.
hi Cicely,
Sorry to hear that the batter was too thick upon mixing. I am wondering if you measured by volume (cups) or by metric weight (grams)? I ask because there is always a chance that the measuring cups were overpacked with the millet flour and/or/also flaxseed meal. Weighing is always the best way to go (click the metric conversion on the recipe card), but if using cups, very lightly spoon in the flour and flaxseed meal into the cups, and then level of with a knife. Cheers.
These pancakes were amazing! I added cinnamon and vanilla, plus the salt. I will definitely prepare these again!
Lynne, I am thrilled that you like them!
Another yummy and easy recipe – thanks Camilla!
I was inspired by your recipe (and the reader who asked about waffles) to try this in waffle form. I ran into a glitch with measurements but it worked out great anyway. Using my Belgian style Oster Ceramic waffle maker on medium-high heat I made waffles that didn’t stick at all (and I did not use oil or anything). I found 7 minutes was perfect.
The glitch I ran into is you’ve trained me well to use weights vs. volume on dry ingredients. The automated feature on your website didn’t work so I used other sources to find the # grams for the millet flour and flaxseed meal. I was making my own flour from millet so I really wanted to know the weight. Anyway, I did verify the weight with measuring cups and found the weight seemed fairly low on the volume measurement so I switched and I used measuring cups. Well, the weight was probably correct because mine ended up much thicker than your image and description prior to the waiting. So, I ended up adding an extra 1/2 C water and 1/2 tsp baking powder. It was still pretty thick so it didn’t spread all the way out in the waffle pan, but that was OK.
Next time I’ll go with the weight (80 grams for millet flour and 51.2 grams for golden flaxseed meal) and I think it won’t need the extra water/baking powder. FYI, the weights when I used the measuring cup method were 110 grams on the millet flour and 61 grams on the golden flaxseed meal. With that extra amount a “single” recipe made 4 waffles (3 that used 1/2 C batter and one smaller 1/3 C batter and I cooked the smaller one about 2 min less).
Anyway, they were tasty and I’d been afraid to try waffles since we’d gone oil free a few years ago. It must be the fat in the flaxmeal that made them slip out so perfectly. I do believe there’s more fat in the golden so it may be important to use that.
Diane,
Im so sorry for the metrics glitch. It only took a few fistfuls of hair pulling to get it right (I exaggerate, it wasn’t that bad. Maybe one small fistful 😂). Thank you for persevering without the weights. And thanks for providing such excellent notes about the waffles! I have taken some photos and video of my tests and will post a waffle version as well, but it is wonderful that you already made it work.
I checked my bags of of golden and regular flaxseed meal and the fat content was the same. However, I know (from readers who had issues with my all flax breads) that there are actually some brands of DEFATTED flaxseed meal (all dark varieties of flax). For example, Anthony’s brand. It makes a huge difference in the outcome of baked goods. Thank you Diane, for bringing this up 🙂
Hi Camilla. Feel free to delete my earlier comment from today that was awaiting moderation as I repeated the info here after completing my last test of the recipe.
Thanks for working on that converter and all you do to help the rest of us make yummy food with no muss, no fuss! I hate to tell you this but I think something is still amiss with that converter. The flax meal amount looks right given my earlier calcs but I believe the millet # is way off. It’s showing 160 g as being equivalent to your 2/3 C on the single recipe. If you look at your link to Millet Flour on Amazon it shows 1/4C is 35 grams. Math gets us from there to 93.8 grams for 2/3 C. I didn’t look at the other numbers as I tend to only focus on weighing the “big stuff”.
I made this again this morning as both pancakes (and 1 waffle for testing) using 94 g millet flour and 52 g flaxseed meal. It worked although it still wasn’t as loose as your picture. The waffle doesn’t fully spread out even when I smoosh it, but it was tasty and hubby and I very slightly preferred it to the taste of the pancakes because it added a bit of crunch (cooked it ~8 minutes). It also made 4 small, but filling pancakes. I’m sure I’ll be making these regularly (probably the pancakes more often since you can cook more at one time). I love how easy and quick they are so I made extra millet flour to have on hand for this. 🙂
Hi Diane! I’m so sorry about the dumb converter not working correctly! I am hoping I have it all properly calibrated now–thanks for sticking with it! And thank you so much for trying out the waffles, brava friend!!! You are very kind with your compliments, you made my day (and agin, so sorry for the technology problems with the recipe card functionality)
Could you cook these in a waffle iron please?
Hi Michelle! I’m going to test that this morning, it might need a tweak or two, maybe not. I’ll let you know asap 🙂
Wow! Gave these a try — stellar! Only had dark flax meal still tasted great. Thanks for this.
So glad you like them Bill!