Simple Pancakes and Jumbleberry Fruit Compote

Pancakes are delicious. We don't have it very often, so it's a nice treat when we do. It's not as yummy as Crepe night, because we love to fill our crepes with fresh whipped cream and fruit. But, then I got the thought - why can't we add fruit to our pancakes? I don't know why the thought never dawned on me before, but, I decided to give it a whirl. 

These pancakes have been in our family for a long time. It's definitely our go-to, never fail pancake recipe. Very simple, even your kids could do it! It's very easy to add things to it without messing up the recipe, too. Cinnamon is a favourite of ours, but you could try it with blueberries, chocolate chips, mashed bananas or even oats!

The fruit compote took me about the same time to make as it does to cook a batch of pancakes. You could give this a whirl if you have fresh or frozen berry around the house. The best part about it is, you can use the compote for just about anything (if you don't eat it all on your pancakes): over hot cereal, tarts, and my personal favourite, vanilla ice cream. 

Simple Pancakes

1 cup flour
1 egg
1/4 sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk
1 tbsp melted butter

Add dry ingredients (flour, salt and baking powder) together in a bowl and whisk until well combined.

Combine your wet ingredients (sugar, egg, milk, melted butter) together in your stand up mixer and beat with the whisk attachment on low for one minute. Slowly add dry ingredients, 1/3 of the batch at a time, until well mixed. Batter should have a somewhat thin and smooth consistency when it's done.

Let batter sit while you preheat your skillet to medium heat. Melt butter or use vegetable oil to grease your skillet before pouring your batter. I usually use a small ladle to determine the amount of batter for my pancakes, but it's really up to you on the size. About 1/3 of a cup is a good sized pancake.

There's no good timing or technique for pancakes, just pour, wait for bubbles to form on top of the pancakes, flip and let stand until pancakes are a nice golden brown on each side. Repeat process until batter is gone.

I usually double this recipe to feed my family of four.

Jumbleberry Fruit Compote

3 cups of fresh or frozen strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries
1 lemon
Brown sugar
1 tbsp light maple syrup (optional)

In a medium saucepan, combine fruit and the juice of half a lemon on medium heat until first boiled, and then turn down low to simmer. If you're using frozen fruit you may need to keep it on medium heat a few minutes longer just to defrost the fruit.

Add sugar, about 2 tbsp or to taste, and stir until dissolved. Add maple syrup if you wish. Simmer on low heat for ten minutes. Serve warm over pancakes. Fruit compote will thicken up over time, but at first it will be a bit runny and juicy, which is perfect for soaking up in some hot fluffy pancakes! Keep unused fruit refrigerated for up to a week.

Yum! xo