This healthy breakfast recipe for 5 Ingredient Banana Pancakes will start your day with spinach, bananas and protein. This recipe also works well for babies starting solid food with baby-led weaning.

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I used to LOVE green smoothies. I have posted several smoothie challenges on this blog, where I had a smoothie every morning for weeks on end to increase the greens in my daily diet. When I was pregnant last year I stopped craving smoothies for some reason and I have only had a handful for breakfast since. I eat yogurt bowls or healthy muffins in the morning instead of a smoothie.

I’m adding green pancakes to that list for the rest of the summer. This pancake recipe includes a few key ingredients from my green smoothies {bananas and spinach} as well as eggs, white whole wheat flour, and cinnamon. I think this is a more filling way to start your morning. If you think spinach in pancakes is odd, I promise you can’t taste it! The key is to mix the batter in a food processor. Make sure to process the batter long enough that you remove any chunks of spinach. I processed mine for ~1 minute.

These pancakes were cooked in unsalted butter on my large skillet and topped with a splash of maple syrup and nut butter.

I serve these pancakes to baby C plain, cut into pancake strips so it’s easier for him to eat.

We started baby C on solid foods around 6 months, following baby-led weaning. This is not a new idea but it has gained traction in the past few years in the U.S. as an alternative to traditional weaning. I was given this book by a friend and I learned so much from it: Baby-Led Weaning: The Essential Guide to Introducing Solid Foods. Essentially, parents’ following baby-led weaning {BLW} skip purees and rice cereal and begin offering solid foods around 6 months, once the baby can sit unassisted for at least one minute.

Babies following BLW are never spoon fed by adults, nor do they eat pureed food that is not naturally in that form {for example – BLW babies eat applesauce and yogurt but not pureed carrots}. BLW babies are given foods cut into finger-sized shapes, to encourage picking up and tasting food on their own. Offering foods through BLW gives babies the opportunity to explore different textures and learn how to chew/mash food with their gums and teeth as they come in. Foods that can’t be cut into finger shapes can be smashed {such as blueberries and chickpeas} or offered in smaller pieces {such as quartering strawberries}. Some babies eat a lot from the very beginning, and others take awhile to consume much more than the occasional bite. Baby C is somewhat in the middle – but he seems to love experimenting with and trying new foods. We know this because he is the most talkative while sitting in his high chair! His favorite foods so far are broccoli, sweet potatoes, apricots, Cheerios, and these pancakes. Without the maple syrup, that’s for me 😉

Interested in more information about baby-led weaning?

I recommend joining the Facebook group “Baby Led Weaning for Beginners.” Here are a few helpful articles about the topic:

• The Do’s and Don’ts of Baby-Led Weaning, Parents 
• Baby-Led Weaning, What to Expect
• Baby led weaning, The Guardian, Word of Mouth blog