blueberry bliss

Long weekends are so great. They're even better if there's sunshine, and if you can get out of town, and if they feature a bunch of mates, and the beach, and a sweet view, and beers and gin, and fish and chips, and a chip butty or two, and dancing and singing until the wee hours, and then a Sunday morning brunch of blueberry pancakes.

I was, about a year ago, converted to Nigella's ricotta hotcakes, but this morning the recipe used was adapted from the buttermilk pancake recipe off the Tararua buttermilk carton. I was nominated as the one who should cook, and one friend (still drunk?) made me briefly pretend I was cooking on TV. The pancakes were big and fluffy, and blueberry filled, and we discovered that slices of banana dipped in a bit of pancake batter and fried, make for a great pre-brunch entree.

Blueberry Pancakes
(serves 7ish)
4 eggs
600g (1 carton) buttermilk
A sprinkle of sugar (roughly 2 tbsp)
2 tsp baking powder
2 1/2 cups flour

Put everything in a bowl, and mix together with a whisk until you have a smooth batter. Heat a knob of butter in a frying pan on a medium heat, and pour batter in. Sprinkle over some blueberries, and sliced bananas if you're interested. Flip when bubbling slightly. The first one is always a dud! Continue cooking, adding more butter as required (hungover pancake flipping during a long weekend is not the time to count calories) until all the batter is gone.

For a quick and easy blueberry sauce heat some frozen blueberries with a little vanilla and a little sugar. Pour it over the pancakes, after dollopping them with softly whipped cream. We also drizzled over some Equagold tahitian vanilla syrup (a goody bag leftover from the food blogger's conference) and we yarned and laughed and wolfed them down while admiring the view. As one friend described the situation: "heaven."