Blueberry Pancakes

At home we love pancakes in all shapes and forms. The traditional thin pancakes, made with milk, eggs and flours are our eternal favourites, but these semi-sweet blueberry pancakes, which I came upon on FB, turned out also very delicious and today I made them for the second time.

They are thicker, baked longer at lower temperature and a bit sweeter than my usual pancakes, can be eaten right as they are, au naturel, but a spoonful of homemade blueberry jam turns them into perfection.

Ingredients:

• 200 g yogurt
• 2 eggs
• 120 g flour
• 20 g brown sugar
• 10 g vanilla sugar
• 2 g baking powder
• a pinch of salt
• oil for the pan
  

Preparation:

Mix the yogurt with the baking powder, add the eggs, sugar, salt and flour. Mix thoroughly, until smooth. The batter is thicker than usual but a bit runnier than the one for cakes. Bake at medium heat in a pan, oiled with vegetable oil. Spread halved fresh blueberries (mine are home frozen fresh blueberries), which I cut semi-unfrozen. Turn the pancake and bake for a few seconds on the other side.

Enjoy with tea or coffee and blueberry jam.

Pumpkin Pancakes

This autumn we are into pumpkins. Twice we happened upon extremely delicious sweet ones and we've been trying to repeat the score, without success. Our latest baked pumpkins all happened to be somewhat bland and not very sweet. But there's always pumpkin puree and its addition to various other desserts, like pancakes.

I have a fool-proof pancake recipe, that I can make with my eyes closed - to every egg add one cup of milk and 2/3 cups of flour, some salt, sugar and a sprinkle of oil and bake. I make these at least twice per month, but once in a while I get a craving for something more exotic. I've tried with adding grated apples and last night I made them with pumpkin puree.

• two eggs
• 150 g pumpkin puree
• 120 g milk
• 100 g flour
• 20 g sugar, 5 g salt 
• 15 g oil
  

Bake in a pancake pan and serve with honey, jam or fruit. Perfect autumn dessert!

Apple Pancakes

Apple pancakes - these are the latest addition to our family cuisine and they are really SO GOOD!

Quite a surprising little recipe by Fatto in Casa da Benedetta - an Italian cook I follow and truly appreciate. I've made this recipe already a couple of times and adjusted it to, well, my taste - for there is no such thing as "our taste" - everybody likes things just a little bit differently than the next person, I've found out, having been cooking for a family of four for quite some time now :)

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 30 g sugar
• 50 g milk
  
• 20 g sunflower oil
• 100 g flour
• 5 g baking powder
• 5 g cinnamon powder
• 1 average apple, chopped
  

Preparation:

Mix all the products but the apple into a smooth batter. I forgot the cinnamon this time, but it is better with it, as it gives these pancakes a bit of an apple pie taste. Peel, if you like, and cut the apple into small pieces. I do not peel the apples, just wash them thoroughly, and then cut them in the chopper. Add the chopped apple to the batter. Heat a pan and bake the pancakes one by one, at medium heat (for my hot plate it is 6 out of 9) for about 2 min each side.

The above ingredients produce 5-6 pancakes (dependent on their size)

You can eat them as they are or serve with honey, jam or maple syrup. They are really delicious with a cup of latte.  

Wild Raspberry Jam

The woods of Osogovo mountain were abundant with raspberry shrubs and the wild berries were just ripe. On the morning after the big hike the children insisted on picking some of the berries for homemade raspberry jam. I was skeptical, but we actually managed to pick more than a kilogram of berries just skimming a few shrubs.

The berries are small and somewhat sour, but very aromatic.

For this jam I used a very popular method of preparation:

1 kg raspberries

1 kg sugar

1 tsp of citric acid

Place the raspberries in a deep cooking pan and cover with sugar. Leave for 12+ hours in the refrigerator.
The sugar will melt and the raspberries will let out some of their juice. Add one cup of water and boil at low temperature until the jam thickens. Add a teaspoon of lemon acid and cook for additional 2-3 min. Pour hot jam into jars and seal.

I fill the jars with hot jam and then turn them upside down to cool. This picture was taken right after the jars had cooled and you can see the small pockets of air at the bottom, as the jam has not dropped down yet.

Today's breakfast - pancakes with raspberry jam. Yummy! I'm not exaggerating - the first bite transferred me immediately back to Osogovo, this jam is so fragrant!