I’m a big fan of very lazy Sunday mornings. So lazy, in fact, that it is well after midday by the time I finally get around to eating. The Princess is here this weekend so we were up reasonably late Saturday night, after an entertainingly dramatic time out, and consequently slept in yesterday morning. Because it was Mother’s Day in South Africa we decided to have a celebratory breakfast of blueberry pancakes with bacon and maple syrup, in spite of not being with our mom. (We figured she’d appreciate the pictures here.)

These pancakes are made with gluten-free and spelt flours and are jazzed up with some rolled oats. This is a pancake with presence. They’re large, chewy, dense, soft, slightly tart pancakes that work perfectly with bacon and maple syrup. I adapted the recipe from The Breakfast Bible. I love this book – full of essays and recipes in ode to breakfast. It’s an excellent book for dipping in and out of – I keep it in easy reach. The pancakes are best served warm, just out of the pan. I’ve frozen some we had extra so I’ll let you know they defrost. I suspect they’ll be fine.

Oat and Blueberry Pancakes

Adapted from The Breakfast Bible

80g white spelt flour

40g gluten-free flour

40g rolled oats

20g caster sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

pinch of salt

1 egg

225ml buttermilk

40g unsalted butter, melted

2 handfuls of blueberries

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

Whisk the buttermilk, butter, and egg together.

Make a well in the dry ingredients, add in the wet and whisk until all the flour is incorporated. Then stop. You don’t want to over-mix this. Let the mixture sit for 10 or so minutes (I got distracted so it sat for about 20 minutes). I added the blueberries into the mixture just before I wanted to fry the pancakes.

Heat a frying pan on a medium – low heat. Melt a teaspoon of butter and wipe the pan with a folded piece of kitchen towel. Drop tablespoons of the batter into the frying pan (I do three at a time) and fry until golden on both sides – when the surface bubbles and the underside is brown you can flip them. If the pancakes brown to quickly, turn down the heat. You want them to cook quite slowly as the mixture is a little thick. If they start to stick, melt more butter into the pan.

Serve with bacon, maple syrup and more fresh blueberries.