Pre-dawn pancakes

Good lord it's early.  My brain, rather helpfully, roused me from slumber around 5am and then stubbornly refused to drift off again.  Fortunately I cope well as an early bird and so have hauled myself downstairs to start the day. 

There is a distinct lack of food in the house at the moment, bar ingredients for a variety of puddings for our family "Christmas" in Buxton at the weekend.  I draw the line at white chocolate for breakfast but thanks to the punctuality of the blessed milkman I have had an extremely satisfactory breakfast of blueberry pancakes (USA style) with maple syrup.  I would have added some crispy streaky bacon to that but couldn't really be bothered to spend the time getting it properly crispy, it was 6am after all.  I would like to make it clear that my heart lies with proper pancakes, those being the silky crepe affairs we all know well, but sometimes we have to take a lead from over the pond.  Plus it means I can add blueberries, so that surely counts as one of my five a day.

The recipe I use is from Jamie Oliver's book 'Happy Days with the Naked Chef' but there are probably a whole variety of them very similar.

USA style blueberry pancakes

Serves four I think, can't remember, buy the book.

115g plain flour
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder
3 large eggs
140ml milk
a pinch of sea salt
a handful of blueberries

two medium mixing bowls
an electric hand whisk (or a hand whisk if that's all you have)


Separate the eggs, putting the yolks in one bowl and the whites in the other.  If you struggle with this (I often do), wash your hands well first, then crack the eggs into your hands and gently move the yolk between your hands until the white has come away.  Do this over one of the mixing bowls, obviously. 

Put the flour, baking powder and milk in the bowl with the egg yolks and put the pinch of salt in with the egg whites.  Whisk the egg whites with the electric whisk until they form stiff peaks (hold the bowl upside down and they won't budge, if they start to slide, whisk a bit more).  Using the same whisk, mix the egg yolks, flour, baking powder and milk in the other bowl to form a thickish batter.  Mix each bowl in this order, don't do the yolks first (unless you want to wash the whisk between each whisking) as you'll never get the whites to form peaks with bits of batter in there, which they must do as you need the air they hold for light, fluffy pancake goodness.  When whisking egg whites, everything they touch must always be scrupulously clean.  It's the law.

Fold the egg whites into the egg yolk batter.  Use a metal spoon, only a metal spoon, anything else will knock the air out.  As will mixing it.  Put a non-stick (essential, you won't be using oil so if not non-stick you'll get in a bit of a mess) frying pan on the hob on a high heat.  After 5 minutes put spoonfuls of the batter, well-spaced, in the pan.  I do mine about 10cm in diameter but it's up to you.  Turn the heat down to medium.  Fry until golden brown, scatter blueberries on the uncooked (upward-facing) side, wait for 20 seconds then flip.  Continue to fry until golden on both sides and cooked through.

Done.  Serve with lots of maple syrup.  Not golden syrup.  Maple syrup.  Again, the law.

You can put lots of different fruits in the pancakes instead of blueberries - raspberries, blackberries, pear, sweetcorn (not a fruit, I know) or currants.  You just need to make sure they will cook in the same time as the pancakes, so pear, for example, should be grated first.