Saturday Treat: Vegan Banana Pancakes

Recipe yields about 6-8 decent sized pancakes. 

Want a great recipe for a weekend treat (or weekday if you've got the time)? Try out this little number here. My girlfriend and I have made them a few times now, and they're great!

I really like this recipe because its quick and easy; the ingredients are pretty basic and shouldn't be too hard to find, and the prep is pretty simple. The one thing I've had to change each time I've made these is adding quite a bit more soy/rice/almond milk. The only thing you'll need to watch out for (aside from sneaky girlfriends stealing batter) is to sure you use a non-stick pan, we've had a few instances of un-intentional scrambled pancakes on account of my very ordinary frying pan.

Let me know how you go or what changes you make! Enjoy!
All images in this post are from original recipe, I claim no ownership. 

Album Review: Hinterland

Ok, I'll admit it, the first time i heard this album it damn near broke my heart. I was so excited for it, and I guess I had a clear concept of what it would sound like, already sitting there between my ears.
AND THEN IT DIDN'T SOUND ANYTHING LIKE THAT!
And i raged a little bit (ok maybe a lot) inside. I'd been expecting a progressive album, but one that stuck in the vein of XOXO. I'd wanted to hear the edge, the frustration, the attitude and emotion that tracks like "Der Druck Steigt" or "Unzerbrechlich" gave us in spades. And for me, sitting in my "20qm", listening to Hinterland for the first time, I didn't hear that. Not at all.
I didn't listen Hinterland again for a couple days. I went back to "Hin zur Sonne" and the older stuff, and got stuck there. It wasn't until I was listening to Spotify radio almost a week later that i heard some of the tracks again, and then decided to give it another chance.
It took me about 3 sessions of the whole album to get used to the new direction. I make no secrets about it, Casper is absolutely one of my all time favourite artists, and so to accept change to something I like so much was hard. Really hard. But after a few plays, i started to see the method behind what I'd thought was madness.

Yeah, there certainly aren't many songs that would fit on a record like "Der Druck Steigt", not as many songs that I can imagine a packed stadium in Hamburg screaming along to, but there is something else. Something deeper. Even though a lot of the beats are muffled by indie style guitars, no doubt influenced by Tom Smith of the Editors, and the (admittedly awesome) guys from Kraftklub, there's still that classic Casper sound hiding in there in places.
At least we get eased into the change. The first two tracks, "Im Ascheregen" and "Hinterland" both still hold the Casper from XOXO. Disguised behind the guitars and lengthy intros, there lurks the dissatisfaction that we know so well from earlier albums. The next three tracks "Alles endet (aber nie die Musik)""Nach der Demo ging's Berg ab" and "20qm" are certainly different, but after repeated listening, I found that they both provided a good transition to the next part of the album, and manage to sneak a bit of the old Casper in there as well. From then on, we start to lose the old stuff almost completely, moving into pop influenced tracks like "Lux Lisbon" and "Ariel". By the time "Ganz schön ok"(with Kraftklub) comes around, we've lost any trace of something that would be recognisable to someone that only knew "Hin zur Sonne". I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's just quite a lot different than what I'd expected. The rest of the album follows the same thread, until the last track "Endlich Angekommen" brings us back to a sense of the new and old, melding together into one.

"Hinterland" is definitely not my favourite Casper album to date, but now that I've heard it a few more times I'm beginning to enjoy it, and even though it's not what I'd expected, it is a progressive step forward for Casper. I guess sometimes it's just hard to let go of the conceptions and expectations that you have for something, be it in music, or in other parts of your life.

If you've given the album a listen, what did you think?