A Fantastic Recipe for Blueberry and Lemon Pancakes

I love big fat pancakes that I can pile really high and offer to family and friends for breakfast or brunch on the weekend. They always look yummy, inviting and generous. I have tried many recipes but this one is a favourite.

In my quest for the ultimate pancake, I often order them when I’m out for breakfast, but they usually disappoint. They are mostly dry and quite tasteless. Offering imitation maple syrup to go with them only adds to the disappointment. Why is it so hard to find something so simple, done well?

My thanks to Nigel Slater, a great English cook and food writer, for pointing the way.

If you love pancakes, or have some big or little people in your family who do, then try this recipe for blueberry and lemon pancakes. All you need are a few good ingredients, assembled with care. If you’d rather have plain pancakes simply leave out the blueberries and lemon. In this case you could serve the blueberries separately (as in the photo) or grill bananas, that have been dusted with icing sugar and brushed with melted butter, and serve them on the side. Real maple syrup is a must.

Ingredients

(Makes about

• 250g ricotta - lovely fresh, moist ricotta if you can get it
• 4 Tablespoons caster sugar
• 3 eggs, separated
• 1 teaspoon fine lemon zest - wash the lemon well and use a microplane if you have one
• 2 Tablespoons butter, melted
• 50g plain flour
• 125g  blueberries - you can use frozen blueberries, just thaw as per instructions

Method

1. Have the oven on a warming temperature, if cooking all the pancakes in one batch
2. Melt butter and let cool slightly
3. Whisk caster sugar and egg yolks in a bowl
4. Add ricotta and break up gently with a fork - leave it ‘chunky’
5. Add lemon zest and melted butter
6. Sift the flour over the mixture and fold in gently
7. Add blueberries and fold in gently
8. Beat the 3 egg whites till stiff and add a small amount of whites to mixture and fold in
9. Add rest of whites and fold in gently to keep mixture light and fluffy
10. In a non-stick pan melt some extra butter and when slightly sizzling, add some pancake mix to the pan
11. If unsure of pan heat, cook a miniature pancake first, to test the temperature. (Eating this sample is a cook’s privilege!)
12. Don’t try to cook too many at a time because you need room to turn the pancakes when the underside is a mottled gold
13. If cooking all the mixture at once, place cooked pancakes in oven to keep warm until you are finished

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