Equal Parts

Do you want to make blueberry pancakes on Sunday? came the serendipitous text message from Jeff while I was at the grocery store buying blueberry pancake ingredients. The weekend marked one full week in our new house, and we both were in the mood for celebrating.

We have a lot of renovation and decoration ideas for our home. We want to move the laundry room from the basement to the first floor, rip off the deck and eventually rebuild it, re-carpet the basement and turn the back portion into a home gym, customize the master closet, paint everything. For now we’re riding a wave of motivation likely fueled by our status as first-time homebuyers, and so we planned to paint the garage floor our first full weekend in.

All it took was three 8-hour shifts of cleaning and prep work in the evenings after work and on Saturday afternoon for Jeff, a selection of what will become my go-to painting outfit (answer: my least used yoga pants and a comfortable t-shirt), and on Sunday morning — “go time” — a bonus trip to Home Depot because the packaged materials we bought were damaged. And a delay on our blueberry pancakes plan. We satisfied our morning hunger with periodic bites of leftover sushi.

It was the perfect first project, technical but not challenging, and had we made a mistake, well, it was just a garage. In the end the only damage was my sore legs from scooting cross-legged over every square inch of space as I brush-painted all the edges. Now we have a smooth gray epoxied surface with blue and white speckles, like a showroom floor for our cars and bikes (and garbage cans).

Finally, at 2pm on Sunday, with the Tour de France finale on in the background, it was “go time” for pancakes and an afternoon on the couch. Work hard and play hard.

These are, without a doubt, perfect pancakes. The batter is mostly oat flour, yogurt, and lemon, lightly sweetened with maple syrup and cinnamon, mixed together with butter, eggs, and of course blueberries. Every ingredient shines — the tangy yogurt, bright lemon, warm cinnamon, sweet blueberries, hearty oats. These pancakes blew my mind, and are on my fantasy breakfast cafe menu.

BLUEBERRY LEMON PANCAKES WITH OATS AND YOGURT, inspired by Cookie and Kate, via Jeff (who made these way before I came around)

The first time I made these pancakes I omitted the lemon; the second time I learned that I do not recommend that. Also, Kate’s recipe, which I doubled here, would call for 4 eggs. We were short, so I made up the difference with “flax eggs” and quite enjoyed it; the recipe as follows calls for half regular, half flax eggs. You could certainly switch back.

You’ll need:
1-1/3 cups plain yogurt (see notes)
4 tbsp butter, melted
1 tsp lemon zest
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp maple syrup
2 eggs
2 “flax eggs” (see notes)
2 cups oat flour (see notes)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 cups blueberries

In a medium bowl, mix together the yogurt, butter, lemon zest, lemon juice, maple syrup, eggs, and flax eggs. In a large bowl, mix together the oat flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Gently fold in the blueberries and let stand for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat a griddle pan over medium-low. The pan is ready when a drop of water sizzles on the surface. Grease the pan with a little bit of butter and scoop about 1/4 cup of batter onto the pan per pancake (sidenote: just realized why these are called pan-cakes). Since this is a thicker batter, I like to flatten each a bit with a spoon. Cook for about 3-4 minutes, then flip and cook for another 90 seconds or so. Use your best judgement; each side should be golden and the pancake cooked entirely through.

Repeat with the rest of the batter and enjoy topped with maple syrup.

Notes: The recipe works best with regular, plain yogurt. We usually have Greek yogurt on hand, and in that case I add to the yogurt about 1 tbsp of water at a time and whisk together until the consistency resembles regular, plain yogurt. To make a flax egg, mix together 1 tbsp of flaxseed meal and 2-1/2 tbsp of water (note this recipe calls for twice this), and let sit for 5 minutes to thicken. Regarding the oat flour, I like to make my own by grinding oats in the food processor. It’s nice to not have to buy special ingredients!