This past weekend I fancied making something sweet and really tasty for brunch for a change. Not that we would normally have something not tasty, but more often than not we seem to stick to the savoury side where weekend breakfast or lunch food is concerned. We usually opt for something like bacon and tomato sandwich, or a toasted cheese and beans sandwich – not bad at all I should say. Sometimes we use Krusteaz buttermilk pancake mix when we fancy an all-American pancakes with crispy bacon and maple syrup experience that is awesome too. This time I thought Dutch pancakes would be a nice alternative to try out.
We are so lucky to be able to get American style bacon in some British supermarkets, and Krusteaz is sold at Costco! But Krusteaz is a half made product and is for those lazy days when I want to make the pancakes quickly, but now that I have quite a few fresh delicious eggs and a nice new oven, and plenty of time at the weekend, I feel like I need to start baking and making stuff from scratch!
Well, I did it this weekend, and this is the result: it tasted as good as it looks, I can attest to that!
Delicious Dutch pancakes with blueberry sauce
I heard a lot of good stuff about Dutch pancakes and have always wanted to make them as they are so easy to make. There are plenty of different versions of these pancakes all over the Internet, but I used the basic pancake mix recipe I have made a note of has been hanging on my kitchen pin-board for so long, I cannot even remember where exactly I got the recipe from. I am so keeping this recipe – it is great!
For pancake batter mix together 2 tablespoons of melted and slightly cooled butter, 4 large eggs, 3/4 cup milk, 3/4 cup of sifted plain flour, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (I used vanilla bean paste) – mix this until batter is slightly bubbly.
Save a bit of melted butter (around 2 tablespoons) for the baking pan and some icing sugar, for garnish.
Preheat the oven to 210C or 425F and the tin for baking the pancakes. I used the good old Yorkshire pudding pan (aka muffin tin) for these, I just could not be bothered frying each pancake separately – using the Yorkshire pudding pan saves a lot of time! And the pancakes are all made at the same time in one batch!
Once the tin is hot, take it out of the oven and brush bottoms and sides with the melted butter, then quickly give the batter a mix and pour it into the hot tin cups (there should be enough batter to make 12 pancakes, fill the tins about halfway). Put these babies back into the oven and bake for 15 to 18 minutes.
To make blueberry sauce you will need 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar, 2 tablespoons of water, a cup of fresh or frozen blueberries, a bit of lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of cornstarch if you want the sauce to thicken – bring all this to boil and cook on a low heat for 5 minutes or so. I have omitted the cornstarch – I like my sauce slightly runny so the pancakes soak it up 🙂
Some blueberry sauce ready to be poured over the pancakes
When the pancakes are baking they go all puffy and I thought they would take over the whole oven!
Pancakes are taking over!
As soon as I took them out the pancakes have deflated. Oh well, that is normal – just dust them with some icing sugar and plate them up and pour some blueberry sauce over them. De-li-cious!
The twelve pancakes
They come out of the tins quite easily – the texture of these pancakes is a curious mix of custard-like bottom and soft and airy top. All I can say is that they are lovely and I am definitely going to make them again! I might try adding lemon zest instead of vanilla and perhaps try other berries for the sauce – I think I have some blackcurrants and loads of strawberries from my garden in the freezer, waiting to be used.
I think these pancakes can be frozen but I did not even bother this time: we just ate them over the weekend, they taste really nice when cold too!
I would love to hear about your favourite weekend treats!
