The Indulgent Ingredient Your Blueberry Pancakes Are Missing

Oct 19, 20158:02 AM

Blueberry-coconut pancakes.
Photo by Bobbi Lin

This post originally appeared on Food52.

My last meal request—more of a last feast request, really, given the long list of foods I would ask for if I ever committed a heinous crime — is a lot of meat things, and then blueberry pancakes.

After a carnitas taco, a B.L.T., and a classic sausage slice from Lou Malnati’s, the only other thing I can imagine wanting is a reminder of Saturday morning breakfasts with my family growing up, where “just enough batter to hold the blueberries together” was the only rule. Our pancakes featured enough fruit to fool us into thinking we were making a semi-healthy choice, while really, truly, still being a means to eat cake first thing in the morning.

The best way to eat them (trust me, I have decades of experience) is to use the back of your fork to smash and spread the bulging berries into a delicious, purple, maple-syrup-mixed mess all over your plate and face. It is a fantastic look.

Except, given my recent experimentation with the following pancake recipe, I may need to update my final meal menu to include coconut. This version is a double whammy of the stuff, in milk form in the batter and shredded as a topping, which pushes the whole meal over the edge for me. I don’t know what has kept me from adding coconut milk to pancake batter before this moment, because it makes for a creamy and subtly tropical base that I’m totally smitten with.

Coconut Blueberry Pancakes
Makes about 1 dozen pancakes

1 cup flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup coconut milk
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 egg, beaten
Shredded coconut (I used unsweetened; the batter isn’t sweet, but the blueberries and maple syrup take care of that for me sufficiently!)
Fresh blueberries
Maple syrup, for serving

See the full recipe at Food52.