Sour Cream Blueberry Pancakes with Warm Buttermilk Syrup

Brunch in the springtime is an obsession for me.  It's just so fitting, right?  Blooming flowers, fresh air, perfect weather, and ripening berries ... makes you want to enjoy!  

The blueberries at Wilson Farm looked amazing yesterday.  Had to get some, and M could not have been happier.  Proximity to Wilson Farm is one of the best things about where we live.  Fairly reasonable prices for top-notch produce and artisan breads and cheeses.  In the autumn there are hayrides for kids and, true to the region, hot fresh apple cider donuts.

My brunch obsession is also rooted in my husband's schedule.  Because his days off are rare, I like to go all out when he does have one.  I'll often wake up before the baby, happy and excited.  Then I'll start scheming and cooking based on what we have on hand.  I usually finish up around 10 a.m. and I'm happy to offer my sleep-deprived sweetheart the best reason I can concoct for him to get out of bed.  I do this every single morning he has off, unless we go out to brunch.  I love it.  (Although I'm wondering if I'll be able to keep it up once we have two kids).

Finally, and more recently... my "morning sickness" usually starts up around 10 am and gets worse All. Day.  Long.  So breakfast has been my only enjoyable meal for some time now.  I am utterly, completely out of dinners that sound even remotely appetizing.  But that's a topic for another blog entry, one you can read at your own risk.

Today's finds were unanimously deemed blog-worthy (even Baby M agreed...).  I had extra buttermilk and sour cream and figured there had to be a way of combining these with blueberries for T.D.F. results.  I scanned a few recipes and finally settled on this one.  Oh my.  I doubt I'll ever make pancakes that don't call for sour cream and buttermilk again.  These were *perfect*.  So light and with just the right flavor.  I'll be using this base from now on, whether I add blueberries or not.

De-lish!

This was my second time making the warm buttermilk syrup and I implore you to try it. It's SO easy to make - throw a few ingredients in a saucepan and simmer 7 minutes, done.  And it just adds more flavor dimension than maple syrup, which has always been a little too sweet for me.  It's got somewhat of a caramel taste, and the leftovers are amazing in coffee.  It's perfect on any type of pancake but I think you'll agree if you try this combo:  Blueberries, buttermilk, and sour cream were destined for each other.

Buttermilk Sour Cream Blueberry Pancakes

1 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt (a pinch)
3 tbsp sugar
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup sour cream
3 tbsp melted butter
1/2 cup blueberries (do not add more)

Combine dry ingredients in bowl; whisk to blend.  Combine wet ingredients in a separate bowl; whisk to blend.  Combine wet and dry ingredients with whisk.  Fold in blueberries.  Heat a griddle or pan to medium-high heat, and lubricate as desired (I used PAM).  Spoon desired amount of batter onto griddle. Once pancake has set, reduce heat to fairly low for even cooking.  You want to start out hotter so that the batter doesn't spread too far, but the reduce heat so you can cook through without burning the outside.  Flip when bubbles appear.  Flipping works best if you use one extra wide "pancake" spatula (like the one mentioned here) and one regular spatula.

Please heed the above advice about adjusting the heat on these pancakes.  They are a little fussier than most - but well worth the extra effort.  

Warm Buttermilk Syrup

3/4 cup sugar
half as much buttermilk (half of your 3/4 measuring cup)
1/2 stick butter
1 tbsp light corn syrup (don't bother measuring; just squirt it in)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla

In a saucepan, bring everything to a boil, and simmer 7 minutes.  Serve warm. Refrigerate leftovers.

Leftovers may be reheated or added to coffee for a "caramel macchiato" effect.

Brunch away!

Try #2: Please Make This Easy, TDF Rhubarb-Berry Pie!!

It has come to my attention that NOBODY has tried this recipe yet.  

To remedy the tragedy, I'm going to post it again - this time with better pics, and instructions that will clear up any confusion over whether this pie is a miraculous paradox of SO easy and SO good.

SO easy and SO good.

People:  This is ALL you need to make the pie crust.  Oil, flour, water, salt, and sugar.  Who doesn't already have these things?  And please believe me when I say:  Though crazy-easy, this pie crust is amazing.  AND heart healthy, using oil instead of butter.

To make enough for both a bottom and a top pie crust, you'll need 3 cups of flour, 1 cup of oil, 9 tbsp ice water, 2 tsp sugar and 1 tsp salt.  That's it.  So easy.

This is ALL you need for awesome pie crust.

First, place the dry ingredients in your blender.  Stir with a fork or whisk for good measure, or be lazy and don't bother.  

Then, add the ice water to the oil.  Stir with a fork until you prove that oil and water do mix (it gets foggy looking - maybe 30 seconds).

Oil and Water

Oil and Water Mixed (using a fork)

Add oil/water Mixture to dry ingredients.

Blend or stir - you get this.

Then, divide the dough in two.  Stick half of it in the refrigerator for later.  Take the other half, and roll it out a little bit.  Doesn't have to be perfect or even that big - this amazing dough is very forgiving and you can pretty much just plop it in the pie dish and press with your fingers until you get it where you want it.  

Dough rolled out - easy.  No need for extra flour or special countertop.

Dough pressed into pie dish.  Just keep pressing with your fingers until it gets where you want it to be.

Ah, now the filling.  Again, SO easy!  Would you believe it's just rhubarb, raspberries, blackberries, flour, and sugar?

2 cups of rhubarb, chopped.  1 cup of raspberries, 1 cup blackberries.  Mmm.

Coat the berries with a mixture of 3/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup flour.  Let it sit an hour or two (or overnight if you want) to draw out the juices.   The juices will pool in the bottom of the bowl when it's done.

Oh, one more thing.  Add 1 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice and 1 tbsp melted butter to the berries and gently stir, just before you pour the mixture into your pie crust.  Include all the juices when you pour it into the pie.  It'll look like this:

Yum!  What better way to taste summer?

Now.  Get the other half of the pie crust out of the refrigerator.

Roll it out into a circle, roughly the size of the top of the pie.  Note:  It doesn't have to be perfect.

I rolled it on wax paper, not sure that was necessary but either way, cleanup was easier.

Next, cut the circle into strips.  These will be your lattice top.

So easy.

To make the lattice top, start with the longest strips and make a cross over the middle of the pie.  The center of the cross should be the very center of the pie (even though the pic below doesn't show it).

Then add additional strips, working from the center out.  It's easy - just eye it to see which strips the new strip will need to go under versus over, and lift up the already-placed strips that the new strip needs to go under, then place the new strip down, and fold the old strips back over.  Like so:

Make the cross with the longest strips.

Lift a strip up for the next strip to go under it.

Place the next longest down on the pie, then fold the lifted strip back over to its original place.

Keep doing this until all the strips are used, working from the inside of the pie out, longest strips to shortest - shortest strips will go on the edges.

The finished product will look like this.  Notice:  It's not perfect.  But it's still pretty darn cute.

Last step - brush the top with cream and then sprinkle with sugar - be generous!  This pic shows just half the pie completed.

Bake at 390 for 10 minutes, at 340 for 10 minutes, and then at 325 for the final 30 minutes.  This will produce a fairly moist crust.  If you prefer crunchier, do not reduce the temp past 340.

Guess what.  This was the next day.  It's great even as leftovers.

Oatmeal, Berries, & Heart-Healthy Love

Everyone knows that you're "supposed to" eat oatmeal to lower your cholesterol, but not everybody knows why.  Many believe, as I once did, that anything with fiber is great for heart health.  Well... sort of.  Obviously fiber has many health benefits.  But only soluble fiber has actually been shown to reduce cholesterol.

Sadly, soluble fiber is not easy to come by.  Only two cereals on the market are allowed to claim it on their nutrition info:  Oatmeal and Kashi.  As for veggies, you'll be stuck with okra, zucchini, and egg plant.  It's that "gooey"ness in all of these foods that does the trick.  Luckily, most beans are great sources... so if you're serious about heart health, bring on the chili, hummus, and delicious black bean burritos (I add a can of tomatoes and top with salsa and low-fat sour cream, and I use 2 chipotle chilis in adobo sauce instead of jalapeno).

But back to breakfast.  I've heard so many people say oatmeal is boring.  No!!!  It doesn't have to be!  Whether you do oatmeal or oat bran, or a mixture of the two (my personal fave), it's all about the toppings. 

Saturday night, our friend Kelly tipped us off that berrries were on sale.  So we did strawberry, blackberry, and blueberries.  So good, and packed with antioxidants.  Thus, the recipe generally is:

- Make oatmeal, oat bran, or Irish steel cut oatmeal as directed but add *milk* instead of water.  Do NOT use instant oatmeal (use "old fashioned" or Steel Cut).  You won't get the heart benefits.
- Add a tiny sliver of butter (or Smart Balance if you're us) and a sprinkling of sea salt in each bowl
- Top with fruit.  If you're only going to try this recipe once, please wait until August and use fresh ripe peaches.  The combination of peach and cardamom simply cannot be beat.
- Sprinkle with dark brown sugar, cinnamon, and cardamom.  The cardamom is very important!  Cardamom is a spice (so found in the spice aisle by the baking section).  It's used in a lot of Swedish baked goods... I discovered it by marrying a half-Swede.  It's great in coffee, just sprinkle some on... it's also used in Indian food; try it with yogurt, mango, and honey for a "mango lassi."  Add it to ANY smoothie for a greatly enhanced experience.

Mommy and baby sized oatmeal - baby sized in the front.  He ate half of that!

So, "oatmeal" is a pretty simple recipe but a great way to have a "special breakfast" that's still healthy.  Bonus:  You can dice up the fruit nice and small for a baby.  Ours was IN LOVE with this breakfast, dancing a little as he ate it and grunting intensely as he reached out for more.  And now he's had whole grains, fresh fruit, and cardamom in a meal shared with Mommy and Daddy.  What a great morning!

Foolproof Perfect French Crepes

This is a recipe I discovered during my year in Rennes, France.  Rennes is the capital of "La Bretagne" (Brittany), the region of France just south of Normandy.  Crepes and galettes (galetts are savory crepes usually filled with egg/cheese/meats/veggies/etc.) are considered a regional specialty.

Now there is, in fact, a trick to making awesome crepes that never fall apart.  But it's not what you're thinking.  It has nothing to do with any crazy wrist skills or even the type of pan you're using to make the crepe.  I actually discovered it in the U.S., by making my own crepes often, and then read about it in France.  The trick is just to let the batter sit for at least thirty minutes after you make it.  Yup, it sounds weird but during my middle and high school years I noticed that the first few crepes of any batch never really held up as well as the later ones.  Then in France I read the answer:  The batter has to sit so that the flour and eggs and all that can "coagulate."  It sounds really medical and a little bit gooey-gross, but it just means that the stuff has to sort of get itself together and stick.

This recipe is SO easy.  The hardest part is sifting the flour, but you could probably get away with just stirring it with a whisk.  (If you have the right sifter, sifting flour takes two seconds - I like the OXO one-handed flour sifter for $13).  Also, if you have time, you can let the eggs and milk get to room temp before you start the recipe.  This actually makes any recipe better, but isn't necessary.

Ingredients:

2 eggs
1 1/4 cups milk
1 tsp vanilla
3 tbsp butter, melted
3 tbsp superfine sugar (regular sugar also works fine)
Large pinch of salt
1 cup plus 2 tbsp sifted flour

All you do is place the eggs, milk, vanilla, and melted butter in a blender.  Add the sugar and salt, whiz until smooth.  Add the flour and whiz again, then set aside for thirty minutes.

Stir the batter again immediately before making the crepes (separation is normal; get it back to a unified texture).

Heat a nonstick pan to somewhere between low and medium heat.  Spray with PAM.  If you're feeling really decadent you can actually melt butter on the pan (sooooo good), but since we're trying to be heart-healthy we use PAM.   Once heated, pour about 1/3 cup of crepe batter on the pan.  Start tilting the pan until the batter runs over the entire surface.  It's okay to dip back into your batter for more; just use however much it takes to coat the pan.  It's also okay to have holes that you fill with a little extra batter.  It'll all work out in the end, because you let your batter coagulate ;)

My pan is specifically for crepes; it's very shallow and the surface is nonstick.  I got it in France but you could probably find it online, maybe Amazon.com.  The shallow edges do make it easier to slide the crepe off onto a plate, but really aren't necessary.

Eventually your crepe will start to bubble up and pull away from the nonstick surface.  Ideally you want it to get to the point where it just slips right off onto your plate, with a little help from a spatula to unstick any stuck parts.  But even if you have to turn the entire pan upside down, it's not a problem - just wait for the crepe to cool on the plate a little and then spread it back out for toppings.

Sometimes people ask me about cooking both sides.  I've never found that necessary.  Crepes are very thin and are they cook through quite easily.  Cooking both sides just isn't worth the hassle, in my book.  (I also tend to like a wetter, chewier crepe - sometimes when creperies in the U.S. cook both sides they just get dry and boring).

We've experimented a lot with toppings over the years.  To be heart-healthy, our favorite remains fresh strawberries, blueberries, and/or bananas with brown sugar and maybe a little whipped cream (well, a lot of whipped cream for me; a little for him).  But if you're on a chocolate fix (and really, who isn't?) you can place chocolate chips on the crepe while it's still cooking on the pan, and watch them melt before you slide the crepe off onto your plate.  Top that with whipped cream... and maybe some powdered sugar ... mmmm.

And of course there's nutella.  But here's a tip on that:  In France, only the street vendors sell crepes with nutella.  It's sort of more for the tourists and the children; you won't find it in the self-respecting creperies (at least not when I was there, in 2000).  Nutella came to be during WWII when chocolate was scare due to rations and children still needed a treat.  It's made from hazelnuts... it's sort of like the French version of peanut butter in that way, though for some reason Europeans really think peanut butter is disgusting.  Anyway, if you're at an authentic local creperie and you order any sort of crepe with chocolate, they don't use nutella.  Instead, they throw a spoon full of butter on your crepe and douse that in chocolate powder... and it is SO GOOD.  I've been able to replicate it at home with melted butter, cocoa powder, sugar, and salt to taste - just in the microwave.  It's amazing and goes well with on a crepe with just whipped cream or with any other type of fruit, too.

Anyway, if you've ever been interested in crepes, give this recipe a try!  It makes about 6 crepes and usually people want at least two apiece.  It can be a real crowd-pleaser with decadent toppings or, if you stick to mainly strawberries and a little sugar, it can be a pretty healthy, fairly light breakfast.