Pancakes aux myrtilles

In English here.


Dimanche, j'ai posté cette recette américaine classique et je me suis dit, il n'y pas de raison que je ne le poste qu'en anglais ; mes lecteurs français ont peut-être envie de pancakes aussi ! C'est vrai, traditionellement cela se mange avec un peu de beurre et du vrai sirop d'érable, qui peut être difficile à trouver en France (voire cher), mais je les ai servis avec du beurre et un coulis de myrtille, ce qui était très bon aussi. Essayez avec de la confiture, du miel, du nutella, comme vous voulez !

Je n'ai pas trop eu le temps de cuisiner ce week-end puisque j'étais occupée dans le nouvel appartement à faire de la peinture :



Mais quand j'ai trouvé des myrtilles pas chères près de chez moi (évènement peu commun), j'ai quand même pris le temps de les mettre dans des muffins, puis des pancakes !

Cette recette est celle de mon père. Quand j'étais petite, je descendais dans la cuisine avec lui le samedi matin pendant qu'il faisait la pâte, et après c'était moi la chef de la cuisson des pancakes ! J'étais très fière de cuisiner pour toute la famille.

Ingrédients :
3 oeufs
25 cl (ou un peu plus si nécessaire) lait
1 c.c. arôme de vanille (ou un sachet de sucre vanillé)
50 g farine blanche
50 g farine complète
50 g semoule de maïs
50 g farine de chataigne
1 sachet de levure chimique
1 c.c. sel
3 c.s. sucre
60-125 ml huile
1 barquette de myrtilles (framboises, fraises, pépites de chocolat)

Dans un grand bol, battre les oeufs. Ajouter le lait et l'arôme de vanille et mélanger. Dans un autre bol, mélanger les 3 farines, la semoule de maïs, la levure, le sel, et le sucre. Verser ce mélange dans le grand bol et remuer. Ajouter l'huile et mélanger le tout -- comme avec des muffins, il ne faut pas TROP mélanger. Vous n'aurez pas une pâte complètement homogène et c'est très bien comme ça.

La cuisson : une fois que la poêle est chaude, mettre un peu d'huile et étaler avec un sopalin. Verser un peu de pâte à pancakes et mettre des myrtilles dessus. Quand des petites bulles commencent à se former au milieu du pancake et à éclater, et quand les bords paraissent un peu secs, tourner le pancake et le cuire quelques petites minutes de l'autre côté (attention aux myrtilles quand vous tournez !).



Déguster bien chaud !

Blueberry Pancakes

En français ici.
Despite the craziness of preparing the new apartment and packing for the BIG MOVING DAY (May 26th), I was happy to have my friend Jessica come to visit this weekend before she moves back to the US after her year in France. One of the things that makes Jessica a perfect friend for me is her love of food. We agree that food is serious stuff that one should have a lot of fun with and always take time to appreciate while consuming.

I would have liked to have time to bake for real this weekend, but parts of the apt still look like this:

No your eyes aren't playing tricks - there's not even a floor yet!

And there's so little time! Still, when I saw inexpensive blueberries at the Asian Fruits et Légumes in my neighborhood, I knew I had to find time for a little interlude Sunday morning: blueberry pancakes with butter and blueberry coulis. Blueberries aren't very common in France and I was very excited to have found some (earlier in the week I made some blueberry muffins based on this recipe)!

My pancake recipe comes from my Daddy - super guest star of this week's Sunday Baking. When I was little, he would get up with us after the 7am birds on the radio with Robert J. Lurtsema (super mega points if you can tell where I grew up from that clue). He would make pancake batter as everyone sleepy-eyed made it to the table, and then I was in charge of cooking the pancakes. I was super proud to be the official pancake-cooker in my house and refused to sit down and eat myself until everyone else had had at least one serving of pancakes. Ah, the childhood of a future gourmande. In season, or when we had frozen blueberries, we would make blueberry pancakes and while they were cooking we always sang this song written my friend's dad that went:

Pancakes on the griddle
Pancakes on the griddle
The fat ones have the sweetest middle
Pancakes on the griddle

Ahem, anyway, this morning I decided to make these pancakes for Jessica and D. (they were lucky I skipped the song). Since I haven't been able to find any wheatgerm in France, I usually substitute chestnut flour (farine de chataigne), which is pretty yummy too.

Er, can you tell we consumed a couple platefuls before I thought of taking a picture?

Daddy Pancakes:

• Beat 3 eggs.

• Add 1- 1 1/4 cups milk, 1 tsp vanilla extract and stir.

• Add without stirring:

1/3 cup white flour
1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup cornmeal
1/3 cup wheatgerm (or chestnut flour)
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 Tbsp sugar

• Stir dry ingredients a little bit on top; then stir all the ingredients together.
• Add 1/4 - 1/3 cup oil. Stir and cook (I like to put the pan on the stove to heat up while I'm making the batter, that way it's all ready when I want to make the pancakes).
  
• Put 5 or 6 blueberries in each pancake as soon as you put the batter in to cook and be careful when flipping!
  

I know it's time to flip the pancakes when the air bubbles in the middle are popping and the edges start to look dry. I don't flip them more than once (I'm always shocked and horrified when people do) because it takes away the fluffiness from the rising.

Aprons and Weekends

In perusing one of the cooking blogs I regularly read yesterday, I found that Kristin of Dine and Dish (a long time feature on my blog roll) is also the star of a weekly column called Dishing it Up Weekend Style.

I don't know if you've noticed, but I LOVE cooking on weekends when I have time and the pressure's off. During the week it's all "oh, no I just got back from rehearsal and I'm HUNGRY... must. find. food. ARGGGGGG". That last part is actually the sound of D. turning into a monster, and preparing to take a large bite out of my upper arm if we can't get something more appealing on the table soon.

But on the weekends there's time for all sorts of things: stocks, and roasts, and pancakes for breakfast - the whole kit and caboodle (or is it the whole kitten caboodle - which is how I've always thought of it in my head? Like a furry pile of kittens... but I digress).

Kristin is calling for ideas for weekend recipes (the deadline is tomorrow!) and she's drawing one lucky person out of a hat (or the computer equivalent - I'm old-fashioned) to win one of these beautifully creative aprons from Etsy by Julie.


What do you guys cook on the weekends? Do you cook more elaborate things, or on the contrary, do you take a break from cooking on the weekend. If you have time, you should share your recipes with Kristin too (I mean selfishly I hope you don't because I want more chances to win that gorgeous apron), but I'm sure she'd be happy to have them.

Almond-chocolate balls and a weekend for painting!

Well this weekend, D. and I are painting our new apartment, which we will be moving into on May 26th (or rather we'll be spending every free minute from now until then spackling and painting because the walls are in TERRIBLE shape).

Perhaps you remember last month the Peanut Butter and Chocolate Balls I made to help sustain us while we cleaned up a little before the heavy construction? Now, much of that has been done (no, not by us and there's still plenty to go), and we're starting the painting in one of the rooms.



Yesterday we spent 5 hours straight sanding, dusting and applying the base paint and then came home and collapsed into bed before 11pm (yes, on a sat. night). Today might be even longer, so I knew that my Sunday baking had to be something easy to munch on, not too messy and portable to help us get through today's 2nd coat! I had been meaning to try Joanna's Almond-Chocolate Balls (remember her? she's the creator of the amazing Red Wine Chocolate Cake that has pretty much become a staple of my diet), and I thought, well here's a good occasion! They're rolled in confectioners sugar so if they get plaster dust on them like everything else in the apartment, we'll hardly even notice!

Pour mes lecteurs français, vous allez pouvoir suivre la recette en VOF avec les commentaires de Joanna sur son site jenesuispasunecourge.com. Je vous rassure, pas besoin d'avoir de cups ni de teaspoons à portée de main pour la réaliser ! (Un petit conseil, pourtant : Joanna fait cuire les boules à 140C. Je les mettrais plutôt à 180-190C, ce qui correspond mieux aux marques de température 4-5 qu'elle utilise.)


Almond-Chocolate Balls
(translated and adapted by Hopie's Kitchen)

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups almond powder (ground almonds)
4 Tbsp flour
1 cup chocolate chips
1 tsp cinnamon
1/3 - 1/2 cup confectioners sugar (you might call it icing sugar, if you're not American)

1. In a large bowl whisk together the eggs and sugar until the mixture gets a bit lighter and foamy on top.

2. Add the almond powder, flour, chocolate chips, cinnamon and mix until you get a soft dough.

3. With wet hands (helps the dough not stick to you), make dough into little balls (1/2 - 1 inch), roll in confectioners sugar, and place on a greased cookie sheet (they don't rise or spread, so you can put them pretty close together).

4. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes. The cookies will crack open slightly on top while cooking and harden some as they cool.

Stick in a tin and take painting with you, or wherever else you'd like to go. We're getting close to picnic season, no? These would also be GREAT dipped in a hot cup of tea or coffee.