Breakfast Today- Black Cherry Pancakes

Black Cherry Pancakes- Messy, messy, messy, but good.

One of my New Year's  traditions is purging my apartment of things that have been hanging around a while. Today that meant rummaging around the fridge, tossing anything green and fuzzy and dreaming up reasons to keep the stuff in my freezer that I swear I'm gonna use one day.

Things found today:

• a pint of heavy cream with a mildly respectable expiration date, 

• and a bag of frozen black cherries from the great parfait obsessed summer of 2010

 I decided to make pancakes mostly because it was the first thing I thought of. I'd never put cherries in pancakes really so I thought I'd take my chances and see if I could whip up a disaster, which it turns out I didn't.
I tried my hand at documenting the process but things got fairly sloppy and cherry-ish so I'll spare you, I was also working off my memory of an ancient Betty Crocker recipe so my attention wasn't really on the pictures. The only thing I would advise is not eating these for breakfast, it's hard enough not to fall into a sugar coma after eating all that syrup but to add black cherries aka ambien to the mix you're totally asking for a desktop faceplant if you eat these before heading to work.They are I think perfect for "breakfast diner" if you're ever in the mood for it.


Batter

• 1egg
• 1/4 cup cream*
• 3/4 cup 1% milk*
• 1tsp Vanilla extract
• 2Tbsp sugar
• 1tbsp vegetable oil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2tsp cinnamon
• 2tsp baking powder
• 1Cup All Purpose Flour

For filling

• 1Cup frozen black cherries thawed (I just warmed them up in the microwave for a minute or so)
• 3tbsp sugar
• 2tbsp melted butter

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together egg, cream, milk, vanilla, sugar and oil, then slowly incorporate dry ingredients into wet until just combined. Let sit for a minute to let the baking powder do it's bubble thing.

In a separate bowl add thawed cherries,3tbsp sugar and melted butter and toss to coat.

Warm your griddle to medium high heat and pour batter onto the griddle in 1/4 cup portions. When it starts to bubble up a little, top with cherry filling. Once the pancakes start to look dry around the edges and the bubbles start to pop, flip those suckers over and cook the other side until they're nice and golden brown.

Serve hot, top with syrup and  (if you're feeling froggy) chocolate chips.

* = If you're wondering why I used 1% milk and heavy cream, it's because it's what I had and because I think pancakes generally taste better with fattier milk so cream + 1% was my way of beefing up the flavor.. sans beef, cause that sounds a little... un-tasty.