I’m parenting solo tonight. I honestly don’t know how people do it by themselves. It makes me a little insane. Especially after school when my three rug rats are a little crazy.

So, to save my sanity, I made them pancakes for dinner. Quick and easy and something all three of them will eat. Perfect.

Full disclosure: I used a pancake mix. I feel no shame in this though. I needed to whip something up fast and I’m no super Mom. I’m just a parent who cares about what her little humans are ingesting most of the time.

So… to give the pancakes a little bit of a nutrition ‘bump’ I added something that I’ve dubbed ‘Cocoa Super Powder’. (I refer to it simply as Chocolate Powder to my kids to give it a little more kid appeal).

What I decided to do was dump a bunch of healthy stuff into my Vitamix and grind it all up into a powder that I could add to the pancakes – without the kids knowing! I’m sneaky like that. I grabbed some rolled oats, toasted almonds and sunflower seeds and a bit of pure cocoa – which is apparently rich in antioxidants and helps with a whole bunch of other health things. Also? It’s chocolate. Enough said right there.

I toasted the almonds and seeds because I love the flavour of them that way. But I’m guessing you could do it either way. Also – this is just how I made it – but it’s totally adaptable to your own desire. I didn’t want to overwhelm my kids with too many healthy ‘things’ that they may be able to detect in their beloved pancakes. So I was perfectly okay with them having nuts, seeds, oatmeal and cocoa for a start.

Ingredients:

1 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup toasted almonds

1/4 cup toasted sunflower seeds

2 heaping tbsp pure cocoa

Instructions:

All you have to remember is to let the nuts and seeds cool – then dump them into a blender or food processor and combine! Then I put a half a cup of it into the pancake mix and my kids LOVED them. Another parenting win!

My kids won’t be taking these to school because of the nuts – but I’m going to freeze a bunch of them and pull them out for a healthy, kid-friendly after school snack.