Breakfast

Berry Buttermilk Pancakes

1 Comment

I have a friend who delights in eating breakfast for dinner.

When she and her husband decide to have eggs and bacon, or maybe some pancakes, instead of more typical supper fare, it’s a treat.

She likes breakfast for breakfast just as much.

So, she was downright gleeful this weekend when she was able to order a full meal deal — eggs, sausage and a tall stack of fluffy pancakes — over the weekend after missing out for many months while living in France. (Coffee and a croissant is just not the same, understandably.)

Berry Buttermilk Pancakes II

I never order pancakes when out for breakfast because my tastes lean more toward savoury dishes in the morning. But there was something about that pile of pancakes, topped with melting butter and spilling over with syrup, that was oddly tempting.

When I got home from a weekend away and found my fridge devoid of groceries (as was expected), but, oddly, with a nearly full carton of buttermilk (which I had forgotten about), I knew exactly what I wanted to make.

Not just any Buttermilk Pancakes, but a stack of them speckled with fresh berries and then doused with real maple syrup. Tartness and sweetness packaged together. And maybe with a side of bacon, since I discovered an unopened package of that in my fridge too (a very pleasant surprise).

Berry Buttermilk Pancakes I

Although blueberries are the most common pancake addition, I wanted to use tart raspberries, which kind of squish and caramelize when flipped to cook against the hot pan.

They become these little pockets of bright berry colour and flavour, hidden in the golden-tinged fluffiness of the pancake. When right side up, the pancakes don’t reveal their hidden gems.

Also, it seemed a particularly summery addition, since they’re coming back into season.

Breakfast for dinner has many benefits, not the least of which is it’s pretty quick to prepare. Whisk together some flour and leaveners; do the same with buttermilk, eggs and melted butter for some added richness. Mix them together gently, fry and enjoy.

Even better, the trick with pancakes — much like muffins — is the batter shouldn’t be overmixed. It’s not only OK, it’s preferable that it be a bit lumpy.

Once done, the light pancakes spotted with juicy berries were just the right mix of rich and tart, soaked with the sweetness of syrup.

They were enough to make me think I need to adopt my friend’s breakfast-for-dinner plan a little more often.

Berry Buttermilk Pancakes III

Berry Buttermilk Pancakes IV

Berry Buttermilk Pancakes

I like tart raspberries in here, but blueberries would work just as well, or a mix of the two. I like smaller-sized versions rather than plate-sized pancakes — better for stacking — so I use a 1/3-cup measure to pour the batter. If you like a larger pancake, use a 1/2 cup measuring cup; those will fit about two to the pan, depending on its size.

  • 2 cups (500 mL) all-purpose flour
  • 3 tbsp (35 mL) sugar
  • 2 tsp (10 mL) baking powder
  • 1 tsp (5 mL) baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp (2 mL) salt
  • 2 1/2 cups (625 mL) buttermilk
  • 2 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1/4 cup (60 mL) butter, melted and cooled, plus more for the pan
  • 1 cup (250 mL) raspberries

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, mix together buttermilk, eggs and melted butter. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and whisk together gently until just combined. There will be some lumps.

Heat a pan over medium-high heat until a bit of water added to the pan bounces and sizzles. Add butter and let melt, swishing around the pan to evenly coat the bottom. Using a 1/3-cup measuring cup or similar sized ladle, pour pancake batter into the pan. (Mine fit about 3 pancakes with some room for flipping.)

Drop four or five raspberries on each pancake and let cook until bubbles form and those at the edges don’t fill in when they pop — about 2 to 3 minutes. Flip the pancakes and let cook for another minute or so.

Remove to a plate and continue cooking the rest of the pancakes.

Makes about 16 pancakes.

Continue Reading

Baking, Desserts

Salt-kissed Buttermilk Cake

5 Comments

One of the more baffling mysteries of grocery shopping is how certain ingredients disappear into the ether exactly when I want to cook with them.

Baked cake closer

For weeks and weeks there were punnets of raspberries in the produce section. Velvety little rubies in their clamshell packages. So, of course, I just assumed there would be some there when I decided I actually needed to buy some to make Heidi Swanson’s Salt-kissed Buttermilk Cake. And, of course, there wasn’t.

Damn.

I waited another couple of days in the hope they would miraculously return. And then I gave up and figured blackberries would work just as well.

And they did.

Blackberries

It should come as no surprise I was attracted to the very idea of this cake. Sweet and salty? Yes, please! I love it when there is a tinge of saltiness to my desserts, in the same way that I love a slight sweet to my savoury dishes. I mean, look at the rosemary cashews, the rosemary-pine nut shortbread…. (Wow, apparently I have a serious thing for rosemary.)

Sugar

Sea salt

I bought my little cannister of sea salt during a trip to France. I am led to believe it is gathered from the Camargue — a river delta just off the Mediterranean and near the Canal du Midi, which I was barging along at the time I bought the salt. Of course, you can get it here (I just saw it in Safeway the other day), but I like that my little bit of salt traveled around with me during my last week in France. Pulling it from the cupboard reminds me of lazy afternoons on the barge, a glass of rose in hand following lunch and the joy that can come from being away.

As a sea salt, it has a definitive burst of saltiness on the tongue. The slightly larger flake tends not to melt away into food. So, it makes a good counterpart to the large grains of sugar that I sprinkled on top of the cake before putting it in to bake.

I’ve only made some very minor adjustments to the original recipe, mostly around the fact that I just don’t have natural cane sugar lying around the house and, therefore, took her suggestion to use brown sugar instead. While she calls for raspberries, I’m sure almost any berry would do. I quite liked the blackberries actually, but will give raspberries a go the next time I come across them. (Actually, saw golden ones at the farmer’s market on the weekend. Tempted. Very tempted.)

Eggs and buttermilk

Before the oven

Before the oven II

Baked cake

Baked cake overhead

Slice of cake

Heidi says this serves 12. Um, OK. Only if people like dainty slices….

Slice of Cake II

Salt-kissed Buttermilk Cake

  • 2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled a bit
  • zest of 2 lemons
  • 1 cup of raspberries (blackberries, in my case. And I probably used more than a cup.)
  • 3 tablespoons large grain sugar
  • 1 teaspoon large grain salt (Sea salt works well here.)

Preheat oven to 400. Grease and flour (or line bottom with parchment paper) one 11″ tart pan. (I used a pie dish that I just buttered. It worked fine.)

Combine flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in a large bowl. In a separate smaller bowl whisk eggs and buttermilk, then melted butter and zest. Pour the buttermilk mixture over the flour mixture and stir until just combined. Don’t overmix.

Spoon batter into prepared pan, pushing out to edges. Drop berries across the top. (I squished them in a bit too.) Sprinkle with large grain sugar and then salt. Bake for about 20 to 25 minutes until cake is set and slightly golden.

Continue Reading

Baking

Berry Scones

3 Comments

I’m behind on my blogging due to many reasons, including the fact that I am unsure what I’ve even been subsisting on for the last two weeks. (Well, that’s not completely true; I had about four days’ worth of mustard-butter broccoli pasta to get through.) And I guess I was also hesitating to post these scones for several reasons, not the least of which is that they were only mostly successful. I mean, who wants to read a cooking blog by someone who keeps making mistakes? It doesn’t scream confidence.

Finished scone

That’s not to say these Berry Scones weren’t light and flaky and fully of raspberry deliciousness. It’s just that I really should have moved the oven rack up about two levels so the bottoms didn’t bake (um, brown) quite as quickly as they ended up doing. However, perhaps we can all use this as a lesson about making sure your oven rack is in the middle of the oven when it comes to baking and not being lazy about moving it when you discover it’s a bit low.

So, this really all began because I had this extra buttermilk lying around and I really didn’t want to waste it. And I was on a bit of a scone kick because I do believe that practice makes perfect. Oh, and because I believe in full disclosure, it was also a bit because I had just bought my first set of biscuit cutters — a lovely batch of three varying sizes that nest inside each other. So, really, a buttermilk scone made perfect sense. And, bless the Internet, I found a nice recipe.

All went surprisingly well, though it did get a bit messy because I broke apart the frozen raspberries as I wanted them to be a little more well distributed. I now have a pink-stained rolling pin, but it was worth it. I’d much rather have raspberries in every bite than just one or two in an entire scone.

Thankfully, because they were pretty tall and flaky, it was easy to just cut the less-than-desirable bottoms off and continue to enjoy.

In future, I would add more lemon zest because I love all things lemon and I feel it would have perked these up even more, adding to the summery flavour.

Cutting in the butter

Adding the zest

Scone dough

Scone cutouts

Solo scone

Berry Scones

  • 4 3/4 cups flour
  • 1 cup, 1 tbsp. unsalted butter
  • 1 tbsp. baking powder
  • 3/4 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 3/4 cup fruit (fresh or dried)
  • 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
  • 1 tsp. lemon zest

Preheat oven to 400. Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar. Using a food processor, a pastry blender or two knives, cut the butter into the flour until it looks like coarse oatmeal. Add the lemon zest and fruit and mix to combine. Add all of the buttermilk at once, then stir just until the dough comes together. Topple out onto floured counter and form into a ball before rolling out until it’s about an inch thick. Cut out using cutters or into rustic triangles using a knife.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, though I would start checking sooner.

Eat. Especially if you can find devonshire cream somewhere.

Continue Reading