In my country, "hotcakes" are popular, but probably not as you think; cachapas are definitely the most traditional, and originally we make them with ground corn kernels, cane honey or sugar and coconut milk, but in every Venezuelan house, families may manage to eat their variants and thus brighten up breakfast or lunch with a little of that homey and village feeling that reminds us of our childhood and grandmothers, when life was simpler--although cooking may have been more time-consuming. Then you'll find recipes for cachapas of carrot, pumpkin, and cassava, for example.

Today I want to share with you one of my recipes, actually two: one for hotcakes and a derivative recipe for muffins; with these, we can have a delicious and fun breakfast free of gluten and lactose, which would have been great for me when I was a child, but those were different times...

It's food with a pleasant texture that goes down well in the stomach and will sustain your children for many hours. You can also remove the sugar from this recipe if you like and replace it with 2 tablespoons of honey or cane honey.

You can make the pancakes any size you like; they won't break when flipped.

You can make the muffins without using muffin liners; they won't stick to the bottom of the baking pan.

• 750 grams of grated raw cassava (peeled and without the veins)
• 300 gr fresh cheese (or mozzarella cheese)
• 2 eggs (1/2 cup)
• 1/4 cup of sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 1/2 cup of water

• Add 1/3 cup of cornstarch--to 1 cup of hotcake batter--to get a muffin batter

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• A little oil for the pan where you will cook the pancakes
• Enough margarine or oil to grease the baking pan for the muffins

The first step is to shres the cassava. I like to have cassava ready to use. So I usually buy 1 or 2 kilos, peel the roots, wash them, and cut them into pieces; then these pieces go into a plastic bag and into the freezer! Today I've taken about 800 grams from the freezer, let it thaw and then removed the veins in the middle (because you don't want to chew these).

...The rest was shredding and shredding on the thick side of the cheese shred.

It looks a lot like shredded cheese. I weighed the shredded cassava; there were 750 gr approx.

And then, you can shred the cheese.

With the help of a whisk, mix well the sugar and the eggs.

Once the eggs and sugar are well mixed, pour the baking soda on top of this mixture and on top of the baking soda, pour the vinegar. These little bubbles will help us to obtain a more airy texture.

To get the hotcake batter, we can finally add the shredded cassava, shredded cheese and water. Now you can take the mixture to the blender and blend it for 10 to 15 seconds. No more; just enough to make the water integrate better without making a smoothie XD

The Muffins:

Now you can take 1 cup of this batter and add the cornstarch to make the muffins. If you prefer, you can heat the mixture a little in the microwave before adding the cornstarch, to obtain fluffier muffins

The mixture will be enough for 6 regular muffins.

Pour the mixture in equal parts into the muffin baking pan. You don't need to use muffin liners if you grease it well with margarine (which should be gluten free in case you are allergic) or oil.

Preheat the oven with heat up and down to 300 degrees °F and let them bake for 25 minutes.

In just 5 minutes, these little lumpy beauties are ready to unmold. You can then freeze them for up to a month in an airtight container if you like, and reheat them each time.

The Hotcakes:

For 1 ladle of mixture, cook the hotcakes over low heat, 5 minutes on each side. The pan must be well greased and hot. It's important to cook them well; remember that the cassava, although shredded, is raw.

This is enough mixture for 4 ladles. You can make the hotcakes smaller so they'll cook in less time.

I think you'll love these hotcakes. Personally, I'm happy about this recipe because I love hotcakes, but not always can I make or buy cachapas or eat regular pancakes (because of my allergies).

These muffins are even more delicious if you put a little syrup on top. This makes them an absolute delight for those with a sweet tooth. I used an orange-flavored cane-honey syrup--if you're interested, you can see how I made it here.

I hope you've found this post useful :)

Even though my son is practically a man now, I love remembering and cooking the healthy recipes I made for him when he was little; it brings back happy moments that I cherish.

So far I've shared this recipe for gluten and lactose free brownies here on Healthy Happy Kids:

Healthier & Nutritious Snacks. Homemade Gluten-Free, Lactose-Free Brownies.

I hope you'll find it useful--and yummy! :)

All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY(https://giphy.com/create/gifmaker) for all them.