An Anniversary Brunch: Blueberry Pancakes

On Sunday DH and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary. 

Couples who train together stay happy together – us, last year in front of Mother’s Beach in Maine.

I woke up early on Sunday (before DH who was out like a light) and had time to think about what was in the fridge and what I could create with those ingredients, something to make a nice celebratory start to the day, a treat to mark the occassion.  Now that we have been eating gluten free (at home only for me, all the time for DH), sweet breakfast treats have been more or less absent from our mornings.  Unless you count smoothies. I landed on blueberry pancakes with bacon.  I had some milk I needed to use up, a few slices of bacon, an open bag of pecans, the end of a bag of frozen blueberries, and some corn meal.  It was another chance to try out the What IiF Flour (a gluten free flour cup for cup substitute by the Ideas in Food team). 

With a little playing around on the Cook’s Illustrated app I found a surefire recipe that I knew would not fail to meet expectations.

I tweeted this photo and had a lot of requests for the recipe. 

Thanks to my friend Amy, a fellow survivor of the hottest Great Chesapeake Bay Swim ever* (*I’m making up this statistic, but it was a hot swim last year when we both swam across the Chesapeake Bay) I decided to blog the recipe – I figured if I was going to email her the recipe I may as well just post it…  Speaking of recipe requests…  when I make my next batch of What IiF Flour I will also re-post the recipe using traditional American measuring cups and not the weight based measurements, as I have had a few requests for that too.

Enjoy – celebration or not this is a great breakfast treat!

Lemon-Cornmeal-Pecan-Blueberry Pancakes

recipe originally from Cook’s Illustrated July 2003 issue, with some minor tweaks

Ingredients

lemon juice from 1/2 a lemon
2 cups milk
grated lemon zest (I zested 2 lemons and finely chopped the zest)
1 cup plain flour (5 ounces) (you can substitute What IiF flour cup for cup here)
1 1/2 cups yellow cornmeal (preferably stoneground) (I used the flour pictured below which I buy at Carluccio’s deli in the UK)
2 tablespoons caster (finely granulated) sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (note: if you use What IiF flour increase this to 1 teaspoon as I have found it benefits from slightly more levening ingredients)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
3 tablespoons melted unsalted butter
1 cup fresh blueberries or frozen blueberries (Cook’s suggests wild blueberries but frankly I have never found them in the UK, if you have let me know where!)
chopped pecans

This is the cornmeal, or Italian coarse polenta, which I used for the recipe. I’ve used it for my pizza crust too.

Instructions

1.  Whisk lemon juice, milk, and zest together in a bowl and set aside to thicken – this basically creates buttermilk.
2.  Whisk flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in bowl.
3.  Whisk egg and melted butter into milk mixing well.
4,  Pour milk mixture into the dry ingredients and whisk gently until just combined (aim for a lumpy not smooth consistency).
5.  Heat a nonstick pan over low heat for 3 to 5 minutes and add oil to coat the pan.
6.  Spoon batter into pan – I made two pancakes at a time.
7.  Sprinkle about a tablespoon of chopped pecans over pancakes, and scatter about 10-15 blueberries over the pancakes.
8.  Cook pancakes until large bubbles begin to appear, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes.
9.  Flip the pancakes – I found this tougher than I remember pancake flipping to be, perhaps because of the cornmeal which also makes pizza dough tougher to handle.
10. Once golden brown on both sides, remove from pan and place on plate into warm oven to keep warm until a full stack is made.
11. Serve and enjoy – we topped this with a little Canadian maple syrup with a side of streaky unsmoked bacon.  So. Good.
12. I have put the leftovers in the fridge (freezer) and they can be reheated in the toaster for a simple and quick treat. I confess – I had one for Monday’s breakfast!