blackberry pancakes with apricot brandy and lemon syrup

all stacked up and ready to be eaten

there is nothing i love more than a weekend brunch that extends itself late into the early evening. that is exactly what a, o and i did this weekend. i made a stack of american pancakes with blackberries and an apricot brandy and lemon syrup. 

when i was little pancakes were how my mum used to make me eat eggs. i was one of those children who didn't like eggs (or more correctly the yolks). i hated boiled and fried eggs with a vengeance and remember many a ride to school where mum would glower at me for not finishing my breakfast. then, like all mothers she discovered the perfect way to make me eat eggs by disguising them in pancakes. luckily for her both my brother and i took to pancakes like a duck to water. i loved them sprinkled with powdered sugar and orange juice and thick smears of honey too. there was something charming about plain granulated sugar as well. the pancakes of my childhood were the traditional british ones that are thicker than a crepe but thinner than leavened ones. 

my dad on the other hand likes what we call 'american pancakes' which are slightly raised and most often syrupy. every so often i make these are home. they are like spongy discs coloured brown by the griddle in uneven patches. they aren't delicate like traditional british pancakes and their sponginess demands syrupy sweetness. i like adding a little bit of wholemeal flour to give them density and a more wholesome flavour. and this weekend i added blackberries to the mix. i used the recipe i put up last week  reducing the wholemeal flour to a quarter cup as i found a half a cup meant they don't rise as well.

i made a syrup with two tablespoons of apricot brandy, the juice and zest of a lemon, roughly four and a half tablespoons of sugar and six tablespoons of water. the sugar depends on how tart the lemon is. let the syrup come to a gentle simmer to dissolve the sugar. while i made the pancakes a and o popped open a bottle of prosecco. it had a mild sparkle to it with a peachy floral note and was the perfect accompaniment to the pancakes.

if i can so, i think this is the most perfect batch of pancakes that i have ever made. my mum said they looked like the ones that we had in bisbee, arizona which was a real compliment as those were some seriously good pancakes. they were buckwheat blueberries pancakes so heavily drenched with butter that we didn't work up an appetite until dinner.