Normally, weekend breakfasts in our house are lox bagels or eggs, and I do try to keep it on the healthy side. It is rare that we eat pancakes, or French toast, or bacon. So when we do decide to eat some pancakes, we always make luxurious pancakes from scratch. My current favorite pancake recipe is for these lemon soufflé pancakes that I found here, despite the ridiculous preamble story that they wrote. Check it out if you want a good chuckle.
These pancakes are soufflé like because whipped egg whites are folded into the batter and they fluff up while cooking in the pan. You can actually see them rise and puff up if you watch closely (provided you have not deflated the egg whites). These pancakes have a great lemony freshness from the lemon zest and juice (any citrus flavor you like would probably work in these). This time I folded in fresh blueberries, which gave great bursts of sweetness. (I don’t think I need to preach about adding fruit into pancakes). I have made these with and without fruit, and they are equally as delicious.
I also like to warm up my maple syrup before I serve it. This is not necessary, but I think it adds a nice touch to a breakfast like this. Sometimes I add some fresh or frozen fruit to the syrup and let it simmer to infuse it with some fruity flavor as well.
Blueberry Lemon Soufflé Pancakes
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs, separated
1 1/2 cups low fat buttermilk
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup melted butter
1 small carton of blueberries, rinsed
Preheat your oven to 250F. (I use my oven to keep the pancakes warm while I cook off all the batter)
In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.
In a small bowl, whisk together egg yolks, buttermilk, lemon zest, lemon juice, and 2 tablespoons butter (melted and cooled). While writing this post, I was thinking that I would like to try to make these with a substitution of an equal amount of canola oil for the butter. If anyone happens to try that out, let me know how it goes.
Pour buttermilk mixture into flour mixture; stir to blend. Fold in the blueberries, and set aside. Do not overmix the batter. These are pancakes not panbread. (Oh, I crack myself up with my silly gluten jokes).
In a deep bowl with a hand mixer on high speed, whip egg whites until they hold stiff, moist peaks. Add egg whites to the batter and fold gently to blend.
Spray a nonstick griddle or frying pan with some canola spray or other non stick spray. You could also use some butter, but there is already butter in the batter so you may as well save those calories. In addition, once the pan gets too hot the butter will burn very quickly (even clarified butter), the canola spray will hold up better in this regard. Over medium heat, pour batter in 1/4-cup portions, without allowing them to touch. (I only have one small non stick frying pan, if your pan is larger – 10-12 inches – you can pour 1/2 cup portions.) Cook until golden brown on each side, turning once, 4 to 5 minutes total. Repeat to cook remaining pancakes, including another dose of the non stick spray. Keep the pancakes warm by placing them on a cookie sheet in a low temperature oven.
When cooking multiple batches of pancakes, I like to give the pan a break for a minute between each batch by taking it off the heat. I will set it on my granite, which pulls some of the heat out of the pan, and then give it a few tennis racket swings in the air to cool it down. I find this really helps to get a nice golden crust with spots of brown on the pancakes as opposed to an overly dark and more uniformly browned pancake. But maybe I am just anal retentive, if you think so, ignore those last few sentences.
Serve pancakes with warm maple syrup and bacon, if you desire.
The bacon we ate here was our homemade smoked bacon. If you are not lucky enough to have homemade bacon, you should be buying some thick cut fresh bacon from you butcher or from behind the butcher counter at the grocery store. You can read more about our homemade bacon and our opinion on mass produced packaged bacon in the bacon post.
I like to cook the bacon in the oven instead of frying it in a pan. This is because (a) it is less messy and greasy, and (b) it has got to be healthier for you since less rendered fat is being pushed back into the bacon. Bacon is delicious enough on it’s own, I don’t think it needs the extra fat. I just put the strips on a rack on a baking sheet and bake in the oven at around 400F until it is crispy. The time will vary depending on your bacon and its thickness, so just don’t forget about it in the oven. I would start the bacon first, before preparing the pancakes. So by the time you are ready to cook the pancakes, the bacon should be done or close to done, and then you can turn the oven down to keep the pancakes warm.
Here is the batter before the egg whites:
Whipped egg whites:
Batter after egg whites are folded in:
Addition of blueberries (I forgot about these until after the egg whites were combined, but ideally they should be mixed in beforehand):
A delicious and semi-nutritious homemade pancake breakfast with bacon.