Today for breakfast we made blueberry pancakes using Stoneridge Orchards Dried Blueberries and Bisquick. We didn’t need to use Bisquick, as King Arthur flour, baking soda, and baking powder work equally well for making pancakes and are essentially the same as Bisquick.

The beauty of using the Stoneridge Orchards Dried Blueberries is that they keep fresh so long and are available year round. Fresh blueberries are only available in season, and are packed in sizes that in general are too large to just make pancakes with. You need a plan when you buy them because they are expensive, and will only keep so long. Dried blueberries on the other hand have a shelf life of several months which give you an opportunity to use them in any variety of ways.

We followed the directions on the Bisquick package for mixing the pancakes and added about 1/2 a cup of dried blueberries to the mixed batter. We then let the batter sit for a minute while we heated our old cast iron griddle and coated it with a fresh coat of canola oil. We test the see if the griddle is warm enough, and we dropped water on the griddle to make sure it dances across the surface. If the water doesn’t dance, the griddle needs more heat. If the water simply boils away the griddle is too hot. Once we get the temperature correct, we lower the heat a bit, keep an eye on how the pancakes are cooking and adjust the heat accordingly.

There is no magic to cooking great pancakes. Simply dip a ladle into the batter, and pour onto the griddle. Pour the batter on the griddle slowly, as it takes a little time for the batter to spread and if too much is poured on the pancakes will spread too wide. We like our pancakes to be about 4 or 5 inches in diameter. Once the batter is on the griddle, cook the pancakes until the top is bubbly all over; then turn them over and cook another minute or two until the bottom is brown. If the color of the pancakes isn’t dark enough for your taste when the pancakes are turned over, cook them a little longer and wait for larger bubbles to form before turning the next pancake. On the other hand, if the bottom of the pancake is cooked too much, don’t wait so long to turn the next pancake. It doesn’t take long to get into the swing of things when it comes to cooking pancakes. The picture to the right shows the pancake at the top of this article right before we turned it over. Because it can take a few minutes to cook a pile of pancakes 2 at a time, we place our cooked pancakes on a warmed plate, and set in a warm oven [about 100° F] until we have enough pancakes made to serve.

One of our favorite ways to eat pancakes is to cook an egg over-easy so that the white is cooked but the yolk isn’t quite set. We then place the over-easy egg in between the pancakes. We top the pancake with a dap of whipped butter, and pour warmed pure Maple Syrup over the top. As we eat the pancakes, we’ll break the yolk, and use the pancakes to sop it up. The taste of the egg, pancake, syrup and butter combined is delightful.