Pancake Breakfast

You know how you get these great ideas to make something tasty that you have all the ingredients for except one thing?  So you buy that thing, make the tasty dish that inspired you, love it, and then have leftover of that one awkward ingredient that you just don’t have an occasion to use.  That ingredient then sits in the fridge or pantry, waiting and waiting to be used, but it is sadly forgotten about despite the fact that it stares you in the face each time you open that fridge or cabinet door.  I hate that.  This happens for me when I make the annual batch of cranberry ginger cookies and am leftover with a lot of molasses.  Luckily I have found another delicious use for this molasses.

I had another straggler ingredient after making chocolate cake for the same party that provided so much leftover skirt steak for some fried rice.  I had all the necessary baking ingredients (because that’s what we Forneys do – bake) except one.  The buttermilk.  Sweet, decadent, thick, buttermilk.  Boy did it make this cake nice and moist.  Well, I needed to use the rest of the buttermilk before it expired (I paid for all of it didn’t I?).  After some online searching, I found a buttermilk pancake recipe.  I already had all the ingredients necessary for it so it was perfect.  I wasn’t about to go out and get another ingredient in order to use up one straggler, and then of course be left with another!

The recipe I found called for:

• 1 c. flour
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 3/4 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 c. buttermilk
• 1 egg

Directions:

While getting your griddle (or skillet) nice and hot on the stove, combine the dry ingredients.  (For all you bakers out there, the sugar is included in the dry this time around, don’t let my lack of sugar in the picture confuse you.)  In a separate bowl, lightly beat the buttermilk and egg.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet.  Don’t over mix.  When I was folding the dry in, I decided to add more buttermilk, the batter was just a little too thick for my liking.  I think I probably ended up using 1/4 – 1/2 cup more than the recipe called for. When the batter is at the thickness (or thinness) of your liking, its time to turn to the stove.

Spray your griddle so that the pancakes don’t stick.  Then start pouring that batter on.  Be cautioned, these pancakes puff up, so the amount you pour for each cake will grow in size.  The best way to know when to flip your pancakes is by the bubbles that appear in the batter.  Once you start to see these sprinkled all over your pancake, flip that sucker over!

Thanks again to that party, we also had some leftover blueberry sauce in the fridge that originally topped cheesecake.  This is such a simple sauce that you can make it along side your pancakes if you want.  You’ll need blueberries, sugar, water, and lemon juice.  Use about 3/4 to 1 cup of water along with a pint of blueberries (or whatever fruit you like), add probably 1 or 2 tablespoons of sugar and the juice of half a lemon.  Heat these ingredients to a boil and then reduce to a simmer until the fruit is broken down and the sauce thickens.  This can take about 15-20 minutes and might be something you’ll want to get going before making the pancake batter.  The blueberry sauce was a perfect maple syrup replacement on this morning.  Deeelicious!