Blueberry Pancakes

Raelene recently introduced me to Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan at thekitchn.  Well, more precisely, she introduced me to her weekly emails.  I'm now completely jealous, and more importantly, excited to try some of her recipes.  The most recent comes from a kitchen tour of Chef Laurent Tourondel's country house - check out the full kitchen tour here.



Sara Kate raved about the pancakes they ate - "the best pancakes of my life" - so I figured I'd give our bag of Krusteaz mix a break and try out her recipe.  I make some mean crepes from scratch, but I've never made pancakes from scratch before. 

My 3 year old son was cooking with me and didn't see me flip
the pancakes. Once he saw them he yelled, in his panicked little
voice, "OH NO DADDY, all the blueberries disappeared!"

I adapted the recipe slightly (I didn't have orange blossom water to mix with the maple syrup, and I didn't use the 3 tablespoons of butter for cooking as some minuscule silly health-conscience assuaging concession.)  I found that the recipe itself had enough butter in it to cook without any problems, though the few I cooked with some butter to see the difference did spread out a little flatter and gained a nice, crispy texture.  You can see the whole blueberry pancake recipe here, but the most important part is not to overmix the batter as you add the wet ingredients to the dry.  I didn't understand what she meant when she warned, "[b]e careful not to overmix or the batter will break," but you'll see as it comes together.  This batter won't look like normal pancake batter, but I had no problems mixing it at all.  Here's the recipe:

1 cup whole milk
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
4 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
6 oz. blueberries
Makes 12 pancakes

Here are Sara Kate's directions: "Whisk the milk, eggs, and oil in a medium bowl to blend. Slowly whisk in the melted butter, making sure not to cook the eggs. Whisk the our, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk the egg mixture into the our until just combined. Be careful not to overmix or the batter will break.

"Heat a griddle or large nonstick pan over medium heat and brush the surface with 1 tablespoon of the softened butter. Using 1/4 cup of batter for each pancake, ladle the batter onto the griddle. Cook for 2 minutes. Sprinkle some of the blueberries evenly over the pancakes, then flip the pancakes over.

"Cook until the pancakes are brown on the bottom and cooked through, about 2 minutes. Repeat with the remaining butter, batter, and blueberries."

They were very delicious pancakes and they'll definitely be making encore appearances.