Strawberry Pancakes~with recipe!

I had a pint of strawberries that got really smashed up on the walk home (oops). I salvaged about half the pint and macerated them with balsamic vinegar and sugar and served them on a toasted spelt croissant spread with some vanilla mascarpone. Yum! The other half the pint was good for nothing but purée. I am currently without an ice cream maker, so there was no point in saving it for sorbet. Berry sauce would have been nice, but no fun. So I figured something with the berry purée in the batter (kind of like the way you can use apple sauce instead of oil with boxed cake mixes). What to do? Pancakes!

They were perfect! They were fluffy and light. They tasted very much like normal pancakes with pieces of strawberry added in, but better, because every bite had strawberry in it and there were no pockets of uncooked batter (as there can be under chunks of fruit.) Best of all they are pale pink! Okay, that's probably not the best thing, but they really are pretty.

I'm so happy with how they came out I'm going to share my recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups AP flour
• 4 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• Pinch salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• Scant 1/2 pint strawberries, puréed (it will make about 1/2 cup purée)

Directions:

• In a large bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients
• In a second bowl, beat the eggs, milk, vanilla, and strawberry purée together.
• Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until it forms a thick batter.
• Let the batter sit for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, heat and butter a frying pan or griddle.
• Ladle out about a 1/4 cup of batter onto the pan, making 1 or 2 pancakes at a time.
• Cook for about 2 minutes, until the underside is golden brown and the bubbles break the surface of the pancakes.
• If you want to add more fruit or chocolate chips (I recommend chocolate chips!) drop them on the surface of the pancakes now, before you flip them.
• Flip and cook the flip side for about a minute, until golden.
• If you aren't serving right away, put the finished pancakes on a foil lined pan in a warm oven.
• Repeat, buttering the pan as needed.
• Serve with real maple syrup.
• Makes about 20 fluffy, pinkish, perfect pancakes!