Best Buttermilk Pancakes
It’s the weekend. And that means breakfast at home.
This weekend? A favorite… pancakes.
My parents often made pancakes on the weekends when I was growing up and it was always felt like such a treat. The pancakes came from a quick mix in a yellow box, and until I left for college, I thought that was the way everyone made pancakes. In fact, they are still the pancake that I compare all other pancakes to!
These buttermilk pancakes are my current from-scratch favorite. I like to add fruit to the inside (and outside) of my pancakes to help alleviate the guilt of eating cake (smothered in real maple syrup) for breakfast. But the cakes are light, fluffy, and oh-so-addictive. The hardest part about making pancakes is not eating all of them as I cook them (two at a time on a medium-sized saucepan is not quite efficient enough for my empty stomach in the morning)!
Today I added a few fresh blueberries and lemon zest. It was a perfect way start to my Sunday.
4th of July Cupcakes
I’m excited to celebrate July 4th over the weekend: enjoying the PERFECT summertime weather (sunny, warm, NOT humid), watching World Cup quaterfinal matches, hanging out at a few BBQs, being awestruck by the annual FIREWORK EXTRAVAGANZA on the Charles River, and of course, eating eating EATING!
To kick off the holiday weekend, I baked these cupcakes and decorated them patriotically with blueberries and raspberries. The cake itself is flavored with lemon zest, fresh lemon juice, and almond extract. The crumb is moist and slightly dense, due to the addition of ricotta cheese. I tucked away a raspberry in the center each cake by filling each cup about halfway, adding the raspberry, then filling the rest of the cup.
This is my quick and efficient way of cooling baked goods… on my windowsill.
Decorating the cupcakes was fun; I used a cream cheese frosting as my “white,” blueberries for “blue,” and raspberries for “red.”
And the raspberry in the middle, once baked, becomes a sweet and tart jammy filling surprise!
I hope everyone enjoys their weekend, and hopefully gets to take a day (or two?) off!
Blueberry Galette
Sometimes baking or cooking endeavors proceed without any major disasters, but more often than not, there are some whoops! or oh CRAP moment, especially in my kitchen. Sometimes it’s mis-measuring or forgetting to add an ingredient, failing to read the directions ahead of time and proceeding with the steps out of order, over or under cooking- the list really goes on and on.
This time, it was an overlooked fissure in the crust, which resulted in an impressive flow of bubbling blueberry ooze.
It wasn’t the biggest oops moment in the history of my kitchen, and thankfully one without a noticeably adverse effect on the taste of the final product. I just scooped up the ooze and smooshed it back on top of the galette and we were back in business!
I suppose galettes are like the lazy person’s pie.. which is probably why I make them often. You can make a galette any size you want (for one person or two or more) and there is no need for a special baking dish. The crust is rolled out, a sweet or savory filling is dumped in the center, then the sides are folded up over the filling. No top crust, streusel crumble topping, fancy crimping or designs required. They’re rustic and simple, but amazingly tasty, especially with this bright blueberry filling and a dollop of freshly home-made whipped cream.
Oh, and this crust? It’s a revelation. Flaky, buttery, and crispy- the trifecta. I could eat this crust all day, every day.
Dorie Greenspan’s Good for almost Everything Pie Dough for Double Crust
adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan
for a 9 inch double crust (I halved the recipe and then divided the dough in half, and used only one half for the galette)
3 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 sticks very cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch pieces
1/3 cup very cold vegetable shortening, cut into pieces
about 1/2 cup ice water (I ended up using less than this)
- Combine flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl.
- Add butter and shortening, and work into the dry ingredients using a pastry blender (or food processor), until the butter and shortening are cut into the flour with some pieces the size of big fat peas and the others the size of rice grains.
- Add ice water, a tablespoon at a time, using a fork to mix the dough. The dough should start to form moistened soft curds. The goal is to get dough that will hold together when pinched, using as little water as possible.
- Scrape the dough out of the bowl and onto a work surface. Divide the dough in half. Gather each into a ball and flatten into a disk and wrap in plastic.
- Refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour before rolling (or 30 min in the freezer).
Blueberry Filling
adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan
I made this amount of filling for 1/2 of a 9 inch pie crust, which could probably serve 2-4 (in this case, it served 2…)
1 cup frozen blueberries
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons flour
zest from 1/2 a lemon
freshly squeezed lemon juice, from 1/2 a lemon
pinch of salt
1 large egg for egg wash
- Preheat the oven to 400 F.
- Roll out the pie dough to a circle about 1/8 inch thick. If the dough is too hard, let sit at room temperature for 10 minutes until soft enough to roll out. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
- Mix together the blueberries, sugar, flour, lemon zest and juice, and salt in a bowl. Transfer to the center of the pie dough, leaving about 2 inches from the edge.
- Fold the edges up over the filling, leaving some of the filling visible. Brush the egg wash and raw cane sugar can be sprinkled on the crust for extra crunch.
- Bake in the middle of the oven, about 30-50 minutes depending on how large your galette is, until the crust is lightly browned and the filling is bubbly.
- Let cool 10 minutes before slicing to let the filling cool.
