Fruit Pancakes
This really isn’t a recipe, but something we’ve been experiementing with for awhile now and I thought I would share our results. Basically, we tend to have pancakes a lot (it’s a great last minute dinner) and we’ve been trying different fruits in the batter to see what we can come up with. We’ve tried the standard blueberry, but we didn’t stop there.
When I add fruit to pancakes, I don’t throw all the fruit into the batter and then pour into a pan. My father does that and I’m not crazy with the end results. You can end up with fruit cooking straight on the pan instead of in the pancakes and it can taste a little funny. Instead, I will pour the pancake batter into the pan and then put the fruit on the pancake after a couple of seconds sitting in the pan. Once the fruit is in the batter, I’ll take more batter (usually using either a fork or whisk) and dab it on top of the fruit, making sure all the fruit is covered. This way, when I flip the pancake, none of the fruit is touching the pan and it’s being cooked from the inside.
Anyway, here’s what we’ve found with the following fruit:
Raspberries:
It’s not bad, but it can be a weird combination with maple syrup. Something I found that works out really well is smashing the raspberries before putting them in the batter. The first pancake I tried, I didn’t smash the berries and when Jesse cut into it, he found molten areas of raspberries that wasn’t all that fun to be burned with. The second time around, I smashed them and they came out great. It took fewer raspberries for each pancake and you didn’t get overpowered in a single bite. Instead, it was spread out a lot more.
Jesse wasn’t crazy about the raspberries in the pancakes, but he only had that first pancake where I didn’t smash them up. So that may make a difference.
Peaches:
This was really good. The peaches added a sweetness that worked well with powdered sugar and even maple syrup. I made sure I cut the peaches up into small tidbits and sprinkled them all over the pancake and it cooked really beautifully. The flavor wasn’t overpowering and it added something a little fun.
Bananas:
Ian loves bananas and we had a couple sitting around, so I thought I would throw a couple into the batter for a change. I thought they were really good, but Jesse doesn’t think he liked it to well. The bananas did add a strange texture and taste to the pancakes, but it was a good contrast in my opinion. Again, I cut the bananas into small tidbits and sprinkled around the batter.
Apples:
This was also a surprise. I can’t remember what type of apple I used, but again, I cut them into tiny tidbits and they came out really good. I want to say I used a macintosh, but don’t quote me on that since I remember the apples adding a bitterness to the pancake that counterbalanced the sweetness of the maple syrup. I’m not a fan of maple syrup, it’s too sweet for me, but with apple pancakes, it was actually really good.