BLUEBERRY & BANANA PANCAKES

A wonderfully naughty-but-nice snack for the morning. It’s sweet but goes fantastically well with savoury breakfast fare. We love pork and apple so why not bacon and eggs with banana? (That sorry old brown one sitting in the fruit bowl is fine, incidentally.) And, in case you were wondering, these indulgent delights go equally well with lashings of maple syrup and a splodge of crème fraîche.

Makes 6-8

250g plain fl our

2 teaspoons baking powder

Pinch of salt

1 tablespoon caster sugar

2 eggs

Drop of vanilla extract

1 ripe banana, mashed with a fork

About 300ml milk

A large handful of juicy blueberries

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

50g butter

1. Sift the flour, baking powder and the salt into a large mixing bowl and add the sugar. Make a well in the centre, crack in the eggs and add the vanilla. Using a whisk, slowly break up the eggs and start pulling in the flour from the sides. The slower you do this, the fewer lumps you’ll have.
2. Add the mashed banana and start to add the milk a little at a time (you may need more or less, so keep whisking until you have the consistency you want). These are American-style pancakes and you want them to hold their shape in the pan so keep the batter on the thickish side. Lastly, throw in the blueberries, whole.
3. Now heat together the oil and butter in a large non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. You should manage about three 10cm pancakes in each batch. Don’t overcrowd your pan or you’ll end up with one large, unattractive mess.
4. Take a large spoonful of the mixture and push it off the spoon into the pan. This is easily done with the aid of another spoon. Try to make them as round as possible. The blueberries will burst when they hit the hot pan so don’t be surprised.
5. Cook for about 2 minutes or until bubbles start to appear on the surface of the pancakes. Flip over the pancakes and cook for a further minute. When they are ready, they should be golden brown and slightly puffed up.
6. Continue to cook in batches until all the batter is used. Your cooked pancakes will keep warm on a plate covered with tin foil.

As featured in “Easy Peasy: Laid-back food for lazy days”

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