Malted Strawberry Pancakes

I had a powerful craving for pancakes. Pancakes with whole oats.  That was my only requirement.  So I searched through the archives of all the food blogs I follow. I flipped through my cookbook collections. I even Googled it.  The results were meager. Surprisingly, most recipes using whole oats instruct them to be ground into oat flour in the food processor.  That's not what I was looking for, though. My craving demanded whole oats.

One recipe, however, had potential. A link to a link to yet another link led me to Strawberry Malted Pancakes. I had malt powder (hard as a rock from disuse), I had strawberries, and--hooray!--it called for whole oats!

These pancakes hit the spot. And the next few days saw me eating them cold, directly out of the refrigerator.   So you know it's good. And I won't hold out on you.

Strawberry Malted Pancakes
From The Spiffy Cookie via Rachel Cook's 31 Days of Pancakes
Makes approximately 1 dozen pancakes

Ingredients:
2 large eggs
1 cup milk
3 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup ground old fashioned oats*
3/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 cup malted milk powder
1 1/2 cups sliced fresh strawberries

*I must have wanted pancakes with whole oats so badly, I failed to read the word "ground" and skipped the grinding part.  But my pancakes turned out quite well.

Preparation:
In a large bowl, use an electric hand mixer (or a whisk and the power of your marvelous arms) to beat the eggs and milk on high until light and foamy, about 3 minutes.  Stir in the melted butter.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, oats, salt, baking powder, and malted milk powder.  Gently mix the egg and milk mixture into the dry ingredient mixture.  Fold in 1 cup of the strawberries and let the batter rest for 15 minutes so it can thicken slightly.

Heat a non-stick pan or griddle over medium heat.  Melt a tiny bit of butter in the pan and drop 1/4 cupfuls of batter onto the pan.  When bubbles are visible on the top of each pancake (which will take about 2 minutes), flip the pancake over and cook on the other side for 1 1/2 - 2 minutes.  Serve with remaining strawberries and syrup or whipped cream.