Deluxe Blueberry Pancakes

 2 October 2022

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, July 2022

For us, having breakfast for dinner usually means eggs, bacon or sausage, and hash browns. But once in a while we will have French toast, waffles, or pancakes, also served with bacon or sausage. And a mimosa, a staple when having breakfast for dinner. French toast, waffles, and pancake leftovers can be frozen and had for my breakfast as a break from cereal. It had been a while since we had pancakes (French toast and waffles are both better as leftovers) so the appearance of this recipe provided a good reason to have some pancakes, especially since they incorporated fresh blueberries.

The pancakes were easy to make. The dry ingredients—AP flour, malted milk powder, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt—were whisked together in a bowl. The liquid ingredients—buttermilk, egg, and melted butter—were whisked together in a separate bowl or measuring cup. The liquid ingredients were next whisked into the dry ingredients until just combined and fresh blueberries were folded into the batter. Pancakes were cooked in a griddle that had been coated with butter. They were portioned using a #16 scoop. The electric griddle was set to 325° as specified in the recipe but this turned out to be too cool and eventually it was set to 425°. Total time to make a dozen pancakes was one hour.

These were very good pancakes, though the best part was the fresh blueberries. They were light and fluffy with good flavor. The leftovers, which were frozen and then reheated for breakfast, were not as light and fluffy as when fresh but they still taste good and still have the sweet pops of flavor provided by the blueberries. Diane suggested adding more berries to the recipe; this would be easy to do as the recipe calls for just under 1 pint, it would be easy to use a whole pint. I can't compare these pancakes with those made from scratch with other recipes. But I can say they are much better than pancakes made from a mix as I had some at a community event within a few days of having some made with this recipe.