Bacon, blueberry, Cheshire cheese & maple syrup American style blueberry pancakes

Yes, it's a bit of a mouthful of a name, but I couldn't bear to leave anything out.  Our favourite pancakes for today's pancake day and hubby even requested them for his birthday last year, which demonstrates how good they are!  The pancakes themselves are really light and fluffy and as the melted butter is included in the batter mix, this means you can use the lightest smear of oil (or even a low calorie oil spray, which I used) in the pan to cook them - and the butter makes them taste fab.

Hubby's birthday pancakes!

With harmonious flavours throughout, the white, crumbly Cheshire cheese lends that slightly sour, tangy but also creamy note that works so well with both the bacon and the blueberries and of course, maple syrup goes with everything.

So why spend time debating whether to serve savoury or sweet pancakes? Serve these babies and you've combined main course and dessert in one fell swoop. Plus, your family will thank you - and no messy clearing up from lemon & sugar or jam!

My Cook's Tips are as follows :

Make sure to put your bacon in the oven before you start cooking the pancakes, so that it is rendered lovely and crispy in time to be broken up over the finished pancakes. You don't want to be waiting, with pancakes ready, for the bacon to finish cooking.

Also, make sure to crumble up the cheese before you start cooking the pancakes. It's so much quicker to just grab a handful of cheesy bits and sprinkle, rather than taking time with crumbling. More to the point, your pancakes will stay hotter and fluffier!

The recipe is incredibly simple and will make six pancakes of approximately six inches each. I use a pan that is the perfect size for each pancake. It takes slightly longer doing them one at a time, but it's easier to measure out the batter and ensures one isn't burning while your attention is on another. Right then, to the recipe!

BACON, BLUEBERRY, CHESHIRE CHEESE & MAPLE SYRUP AMERICAN STYLE BLUEBERRY PANCAKES (Serves 3 : makes 6 individual pancakes)

Ingredients :

250g streaky bacon
200g Cheshire cheese (or any white crumbly cheese)
300g self-raising flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
2 small eggs (discard half the white of the second egg if using medium or large eggs)
450ml milk
10-15g melted butter
200g blueberries
light vegetable oil or a low calorie cooking spray
maple syrup to taste.

Method :

Begin by lining the inside of a large baking tray and the outside (or reverse) of a slightly smaller baking tray, with silver foil. Lay each rasher of streaky bacon onto the large baking tray until the tray is covered or the bacon runs out! Place the foil covered side of the smaller baking tray on top, to sandwich the bacon between the trays. Place into a 180degF/350degC/Gas 4 oven for 20-25 minutes.

Crumble the cheese into a bowl, making sure to have both larger chunks and smaller pieces.

Next, for the pancakes, place the flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl and stir together.

In another bowl, add the egg(s) to the milk and beat until combined.

Melt the butter in the pancake pan.

Make a well in the flour mixture and pour in half the egg/milk mixture. Stir with a hand whisk until combined, then add the remains of the egg/milk mixture. Again, stir in until combined and the batter is lump free.

Add the melted butter to the pancake batter and whisk it in until well combined.

Stir in 150g of the blueberries.

Heat the pancake pan (which should still be buttery) over a moderate heat and add a ladleful of the pancake batter, making sure to catch a good helping of the blueberries.

Wait - without poking, stirring or otherwise bothering your pancake - until bubbles have formed on the surface and you can see the edges have pulled away from the pan slightly. Insert a fish slice under the pancake and quickly flip it over. The pancake will rise as it cooks and you can slip the slice underneath and lift it slightly to check the colour. Make sure that the pan doesn't become too hot - you may need to turn it down slightly from time to time - or the pancake will colour on the outside but still be wet on the inside.

Each pancake will only take a couple of minutes on each side, depending on how hot the pan is.

Place each pancake onto a warmed plate and cover with a sheet of kitchen paper, adding the next one on top and repeat until all the pancake batter is used up.

When all the pancakes are cooked, serve two to each plate and sprinkle with Cheshire cheese, then bacon pieces, then extra blueberries from the remaining 50g.

For the final flourish, tip a good swishing of maple syrup over the lot and get stuck in!

Printable version

"Pimp my pancake" challenge from goodtoknow.co.uk

When goodtoknow.co.uk got in touch with me, asking whether I'd be interested in joining in with a bit of fun on their website with "Pimp my pancake" - I couldn't say no.

Every year since I started this blog, we've - somehow - managed to miss pancake day and this seemed to be a very good way of including it, without having to present photographs of yummy, but relatively dull pancakes.

I'll admit, before this I hadn't heard of goodtoknow.co.uk, which is apparently one of the biggest women's sites in the U.K.  Well, you learn something new every day.

I've joined in with this really just for the fun of it, but they will be placing the best pancakes on their website, with some prizes up for grabs - so you never know!  If you're interested in having a go at pimping a pancake, get yourself along to this link and you can read all about it.

Anyway, immediately the ole grey matter started to work along the lines of "unusual fillings for pancakes" and although we could think of quite a few, plus all sorts of souffle style pancakes, none of them had enough of the surprise about them, to qualify as having been "pimped".


I needed to stop thinking of a "normal" pancake - and start thinking outside of the box (or the frying pan, perhaps).  Now if you think of a car that has been "pimped" (hate that expression, but it is "of the day" so I'll go with it), it - obviously - is still a car, but it is bigger and flashier and louder and shinier and well, just everything in it, on it or around it is just more than you'd have expected.

So, translate that to a pancake.  You see my difficulty.

I decided to consult the interwebs for inspiration, and searched google's images for pancakes.  It threw up the normal lemon & sugar and maple syrup pancakes - but then (having been through quite a few pages of photographs), there was an image of a red filigree pancake made in the shape of a heart.  How did they do that?

Well, it turned out that the shape was piped into the pan using an icing set and the "pancake" was cooked slowly to set the pancake mix without it flowing everywhere.  Well now, that gave me something to think about!

I really liked this idea, but I didn't want to make my pancake in the shape of a heart as that was too Valentine's day and not enough Pancake day.  Now bearing in mind that pancake day is very often right at the point where the harshest days of winter have passed by and the balmier days of spring are making themselves felt - with accompanying spring flowers, I thought a flower motif might be nice.

I settled on the daisy because it was simple to create and gave a bit of room for creativity in the colouration of the petals, etc.

The pancake recipe I used is as follows and makes a rather puffier version than the traditional crepe-style pancake :

AMERICAN-STYLE PANCAKES

Ingredients :

70g plain flour
65g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
half a tsp of salt
2 tbsp caster sugar
120ml full cream milk
1 large egg, beaten
2 tbsp rapeseed oil.

Method :

1.  Place all the dry ingredients into a bowl and stir to combine.

2.  Place all the wet ingredients in another bowl and stir to combine.

3.  Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir with a balloon whisk until no lumps remain.

4.  Lightly oil a non-stick frying pan, placed over a moderate heat.  Ladle in however much you require of the batter, to make whichever size of pancake you prefer.

5.  Cook, without interference, until you see small bubbles appearing through the batter mix, then gently an with a palette knife or fish slice, turn the pancake onto the other side to cook for 2 minutes or so.  Both sides should be golden brown.

Serve with whatever toppings you prefer.

Aaargh!  Overcooked!

Now I don't own an icing set, but hubby had the bright idea of using a squeezy bottle instead.  They're inexpensive to buy - much less than an icing set - and we got a bag with two different sizes for around £3.  I reckoned I'd probably be more likely to re-use the bottles than an icing set anyway!

The first go at piping out the flower shape into the pan was a total disaster - as often happens.  You need to have a couple of goes at it, to get the flow from the bottle right and the speed at which you need to "draw" with it, right.  The first one fell to pieces as I tried to slide it from the pan - so the garden birdies got that.  They liked it, too!

Having got the measure of the bottles and realised that I need to s-l-o-w down with it, I then completely overcooked the next one - and the birdies got that too.

I liked the fact that the heart-shaped pancake was coloured red and had intended to make mine red, too.  However, I completely failed to realise that if you put half a bottle of red food colouring into your pancake mix, it will a) change the consistency and b) make it inedible.  So instead of piping out a lovely red flower, I got on with cleaning out the bottles and making up another pancake mix.  *sigh*

Edible glitter - how much fun is that?

The next flower went perfectly.  The lines were strong and even, the pancake was cooking beautifully, with little bubbles that puffed up each line exactly how I wanted.  I kept a close eye on how it was cooking and it even left the pan without breaking.  Success!


After a teensy bit of moulding the flower to the shape of the plate so as to prevent the raspberry coulis from flowing underneath the petals' edges, I got on with piping in the coulis and smoothing it evenly to make pink flower petals.

A liberal sprinkling of gold glitter in the middle, some raspberries for decoration around the petals and a sprig of fresh mint to represent the flower's stalk - and my pancake was pimped.

Well, it kept the two of us busy on a wet Thursday afternoon!

~:~

Edit :  Just to confirm that we won the "Best Blogger" category with the Daisy pancake!

Woo!!

 

Happy birthday breakfast!

You know it's your birthday, when this shows up for breakfast.  :)

Gorgeous, just doesn't describe it.  Oh, and yes, it DID wake me up!  lol