Light, fluffy and tender, perfectly cooked little buttermilk breakfast cakes filled with blueberries, slathered with butter and dripping with pure maple syrup. Don’t these look delicious? They were. 🙂

Blueberries are everywhere in the markets right now. I also can’t tell you how many blogs that I follow have posted either blueberry muffins, blueberry cheesecake, or blueberry pancakes. Baby Lady and I love blueberries. Typically, we eat them with a little yogurt in the morning for breakfast. Of late, however, I have been dying for blueberries in a more substantial way, like blueberry pancakes. You see, I love blueberry pancakes. I have loved blueberry pancakes from my early childhood. Baby Lady loves pancakes. When we go to Hawaii we have to make at least one stop for pancakes. Because of the heavy carb load we hardly ever eat them and almost never make them for ourselves. So, it’s a real treat when we make pancakes, especially when they’re blueberry pancakes. 🙂

This past weekend, I got a real hankerin’ for blueberry pancakes. I simply had to have them. I wanted light, fluffy, tender buttermilk pancakes filled with fresh, sweet, ripe blueberries. Inasmuch Baby Lady didn’t put up much of a protest, this is what we did Easter morning.

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups buttermilk
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• blueberries

Instruction

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt,

soda and sugar.

Stir to mix dry ingredients together

Beat the eggs

Combine the eggs with the buttermilk in a mixing bowl

Add the melted butter

Vigorously whisk together to emulsify the oil and combine all the wet ingredients.

Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients

Using a spoon, not a whisk, stir the batter being careful not to over mix.

You want a lumpy batter. If you over mix the batter to make it smooth and creamy a series of things will occur. First, you will overdevelop the glutens. This will result in rubbery or tough pancakes. Second, you will cause early formation and escape of carbon dioxide gas which form the little the bubbles in the batter. The carbon dioxide gas bubbles are important for light pancakes. As you will see in the follow up photo, this batter is a thick, lumpy batter.

The next trick to pancakes is the heat of your skillet. Improper heat will result in either the bottom burning while the top is not done, or the top drying out before the bottom nicely browns. Now, I use a cast iron skillet because 1) it is very heavy and transfers heat evenly along the surface of the cooking area; and 2) it’s seasoned so I need just a little oil on a paper towel rubbed on the surface to make sure the pancakes don’t stick. Heat skillet over medium-low heat for 10 minutes or so to allow the skillet to reach proper temperature. The ideal temperature of your skillet or griddle will be 375 F. Obviously, if your skillet is smoking, it’s too hot. To test your skillet, drop a little drop of water onto your cooking surface. If the water droplet dances across the surface and then evaporates, you are at the correct temperature.

Ice cream scoops are ideal for pouring pancake batter. So, fill an ice cream scoop with batter and pour out onto skillet.

See how thick and lumpy this batter is? I help spread the batter with the scoop.

Now, add your blueberries.

Be patient and watch your pancake. When you see bubbles appearing in the middle of the pancake and the edges are somewhat dry, roughly 2 – 3 minutes, its time to turn the pancake.

Look at how fluffy that pancake is and the beautiful color from the correct temperature of the skillet. Everything is in perfect balance. Now, it won’t take as much time to cook this side so after 1 – 2 minutes, remove the pancake from the skillet and do another one. Hold the pancake in a 150 – 175 F oven until all pancakes are done and you’re ready to serve. This recipe will make 8 pancakes roughly 5 inches in diameter using the ice cream scoop.

Place pancakes on a plate and bring to the table. Look how pretty these pancakes turned out.

Baby Lady and I each had 2 pancakes. Slather with butter and drench with warm pure maple syrup.

Enjoy! We surely did. 🙂