Recipe - Blueberry Pancakes

I'm sitting here watching Castle on the TV with dear hubby while using my new toy... my Samsung Tab 10.1... it's so perfect for blogging with and on top of it sooooooo quiet! On that small note, if you have a tablet pc or phone that can handle blogger in browser mode, do that instead as the Blogger app doesn't have the editing abilites as the full site does.

I figured I'd make my first entry from it tonight and share my wonderful American Style Blueberry Pancakes but I was only able to start it with the tab and had finish it with my computer because I still haven't figured out how to highlight, copy and paste with the tablet. I need to be able to do that to keep this blog looking it's best and didn't want to take more time trying to figure it out before posting this.

I made these on my husband's last long weekend and they came out soooo good for a first try... light, fluffy and I have to admit to having added almost too many blueberries but I'm a bit biased, is there really such a thing as 'too much' when it comes to adding fruit or veggies to dishes?? Oh and a warning now, I took LOTS of pictures of these! I just couldn't help myself, every thing looked so good and so fresh! I mean how can you pass up the lovelies below without snapping at least a few photos??

Ingredients
 ♥ 2 eggs, separated
 ♥ 2 cups flour

 ♥ 2 tsp baking powder

 ♥ 2 tsp vanilla

 ♥ 3 tbs sugar

 ♥ 1-2 tsp ground cinnamon

 ♥ 1 cup milk

 ♥ 3 tbs butter, melted

 ♥ 1 cup fresh blueberries (give or take 1/2 cup)

picture does not include the melted butter

Directions - Batter Preparation

First thing you will want to do is separate your eggs and whip the egg whites into soft peaks.

 Aren't they just perfectly separated?? (proud moment)

first stage - light foaming

 second stage - egg whites start to keep shape with soft peaks

third stage - egg whites hold shape in stiff peaks and have turned shiny

Set the now whipped egg whites aside for a bit. In a larger bowl combine flour, baking powder, sugar and ground cinnamon. Then either in a large 2 cup measuring cup combine egg yolks, milk, vanilla and butter lightly. Add wet mixture to dry mixture and combine using a whisk and not a mixer. You do not want to over beat the mixture, you just want to combine it well but while trying to avoid adding a bunch of un-wanted air to the batter. I cheated a bit in my photos as I was working so quickly on these that my dry ingredients never had a chance to stick to the bowl, the reason why you want to separate them in the first place.

Once dry pluse wet ingredients are combine well and you don't have any lumps you will want to fold in the whipped egg whites. Do this softly and gently. The purpose of whipping the egg whites in the first place to give the batter lightness and fluff that you lose when you remove the gluten from these types of recipes. Use a jar scraping style spatchula for this. Gently turn the bowl as you scrape the sides of it, bringing the batter into the egg whites and in turn mixing the egg whites into the batter. At this stage of mixing, you can choose to either add the blueberries to the batter before adding the egg whites or after. I did it before in order to try to better retain the fluffiness of the egg whites that I was adding but it didn't make too much of a difference either way when I did it the second time around in which I added them after the egg whites.

Directions - Frying

As usual, I usually end up at least making my first couple of pancakes quite darker then I wish to but after a couple of them, I get them nice and light golden. They key to this is to be patient. I know a lot of people swear by a high heat griddle but I have learned at least with my stove (electric btw) works best on a medium heat, sometimes even more toward the high low to low medium setting. Then let it warm slowly, use liquid margarine or coat the pan with vegetable oil but use a paper towel to rub it onto the pan and to remove the excess. You want to fry these not deep fry them.

I also suggest that you use 2 pans or a large griddle that will cook more then one pancakes at a time for this process, at least if you are like me where making a half dozen pancakes can seem like it takes forever when doing them one at a time and in actuality it most likely will take about 40minutes if done this way where as you can cut this in half using two.

So with that out of the way, I find it easy to do this one of 2 ways. Either pour your batter into a large measuring cup (I have a beloved 2 cup glass one for this if I choose) or do as I do most of the time and use a smaller sauce ladle. It looks kind of like a full soup ladle but it about half the measure and has a larger pour spout which is perfect for the pancake batter.

Pour about 1/4 to 1/3rd of a cup worth of batter on your greased pan and be patient. What you will want to see is the batter start to bubble a bit and then to see those bubble pop. They will leave tiny holes in the pancake and you will see the top start to become dry.

Flip and leave for a minute longer. Your best 'serving' side will be the one that you started with as this has hit the pan while in batter form and gotten most of the time to fry compared to the mostly dried out top part.

Serve these beauties with maple syrup or just with a pat of butter. Pancakes can be made into SOOOO many different kinds that the possibilities are almost endless. I've already redone this recipe in raspberry and just plain ol' pancake batter recipes but I also have on hand to make apple/cinnamon with icing rather then syrup (more meant to be a dessert then a breakfast item though) and even cinnamon swirl ones that use a cinnamon sauce to squeeze into the wet batter and has a cream cheese icing to use on them. Is it another long weekend yet?!

Enjoy! And remember they go very nicely with breakfast sausages and eggs, specially loosely scrambled (recipe/directions to come in order to finish off the photos). Just remember when buying breakfast sausages, you check the ingredients very carefully as a lot of sausages add wheat or bread to their mixture to bulk it out. If you have a butcher nearby, he might even be able to prepare you some that are gluten free, like mine did.