Sour dough sour cherry pancakes

Sunday breakfast! What to make? For many in the US, pancakes seem to be the ultimate treat. At the same time, we did not grow up with pancakes, and frankly we do not even know what the Slovenian word for pancakes is.

Of course, this is a good reason to give pancakes a try and develop an appropriate appreciation. I have made several successful attempts, but the memorable "mmmmm, this is so good" experience has been elusive. The key was a hint from Heather, the spectacular product manager on my previous project, and exactly the kind of a person you just want to work with. Heather wanted to make sourdough pancakes, so I gave her some of my nicely matured starter. Of course, that was something that I, too, needed to try, being keen on sourdough anything.

I found a recipe on the web, and gave it a try. The result was very good, but still lacked the wow factor, so I decided to experiment. To my big surprise, one attempt was all it took, and here is the record so we can repeat the experience.

First, sift dry ingredients into a bowl: 3/4 cup flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 2 TBS sugar. A separate and taller bowl will contain wet ingredients: Lightly whisk two eggs - let me put in a plug for the best whisk I have ever owned; it is on a smaller side, perfect for a home kitchen, and is unbelievably easy to clean. Add 3/4 cup of milk, 1 tsp of vanilla extract, and whisk again. Then whisk in about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of melted extra virgin super duper coconut oil from Nutiva. I suppose butter would do as well.  Finally, add about 1 cup of stiff sourdough starter, and slowly whisk again to incorporate.

Get a jar of sour cherries in syrup, and drain the fruit so that you can work fast when the pancakes are cooking.

Preheat your griddle on medium-high, with a bit of high-smoking-point oil. Lately I prefer avocado oil. I learned than one can easyly overheat the griddle and make the oil smoke, so I use oil that can withstand high heat. I also tend to pay a lot of attention, so I do not have to clean the griddle and start again.

Once the griddle is hot, gently whisk the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. The consistency should be a bit thicker than heavy cream. You can correct the consistency by adding milk by a tablespoon, or by adding flour by a teaspoon.

Use about 1/4 cup of the batter for one pancake, or if you like to improvise like me, simply spoon out the batter until you think you have enough for a pancake. I find it that 2-3 spoons work great.

As soon as the batter for a batch of pancakes is on the griddle, add a few sour cherries to each pancake - for the pancakes I made, 5 cherries appeared the right quantity.

After about 1.5 to 2 minutes, the pancakes will be golden and the cherries will set into the batter, flip the pancakes over, and again cook for another minute or so, until golden. If your heat is too high, the pancakes will burn on the outside and will not cook on the inside. Patience!!!

Repeat the routine until all the batter is used up. All that is left is consumption! Jasna's likes a spoonful of chestnut honey on top of her pancakes, and I enjoy maple syrup. We skipped the butter or coconut oil, and nuts and fruit, we even skipped the whipped cream. But you don't have to!