sour cream pancakes with peaches and birch syrup

Right now the peaches are pretty unbelievable. To be clear, I write this not as someone who is picking peaches from an orchard down the road nor as someone who visits a weekly farmers market and has a supplier providing a beautiful heirloom variety (I genuinely wish either of those things were true). No, I say the peaches are pretty unbelievable because the box of peaches at Trader Joes this year are very good peaches.

I did not grow up eating good peaches. By the time they made it to Alaska, the fruit was either still crunchy green or ripe beyond saving. It took me a while to get used to the soft luscious texture of ripe fruit. But one of the benefits of life in southern California is great produce.

I was sleeping in on a Sunday morning when my husband texted me from the living room to say he was craving pancakes (such is modern life). Knowing I had a handful of peaches at that just perfect state of ripeness on the counter was the motivation I needed to get up.

The pancake recipe is from Ina Garten. Her recipe is originally for sour cream banana pancakes, but I have pretty strong feelings about bananas. I left the banana out and what remains is a perfection of a pancake: light, barely sweet, with a bit of sour cream tang.

When I was a kid I thought my mom was crazy for putting sour cream on her pancakes instead of butter. She would put a little dollop on and then drizzle the syrup over. She told us it was a perfect contrast to the sweetness of the syrup. She was so very very right (about this and a number of other things).

One of my favorite summer memories is making these pancakes for my mom during a July visit. Just as I suspected, she loved them too.

Recipe from Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Family Style Cookbook.

sour cream pancakes with peaches

recipe makes 12 pancakes

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 cup sour cream
3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon milk
2 extra-large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest (I downgrade it to 1/4 teaspoon)
Unsalted butter

1) Sift flour, sugar, baking powder and salt all together into a medium bowl. Sifting seems like such a fiddly step until you don't do it and end up with a baking powder lump in your pancake.

2) In a separate bowl, whisk sour cream, milk, eggs, vanilla, and lemon zest. Next, add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, taking care to mix only until combined.

3) In a large skillet over medium-low heat, melt 1 tablespoon of butter. Spoon the pancake batter into the pan (I find a 1/3 or 1/2 cup measuring cup perfect for this.) Once little bubbles begin to form and pop on the top, the pancake should be ready to flip (only takes a couple of minutes.) Flip the pancake and cook for another minute or so, until browned.

4) After each pancake, wipe out the pan, and add more butter for each fresh pancake. Continue cooking pancakes until all the batter is used.

5) Top each pancake with a dollop of sour cream, a scoop of diced fresh peaches and maple or birch syrup.

For topping:

4 ripe peaches, diced and tossed with a tablespoon of sugar
Maple or birch syrup
1 pint sour cream

Enjoy a wonderful breakfast with family !

chocolate tanker brownies

A friend recently gifted me with a 1 pound solid hunk of chocolate. It was not a massive chocolate bar or post-Easter chocolate bunny, but rather a monster hunk of chocolate from a chocolate tanker truck. Yes, it turns out that those enormous tanker trucks sometimes seen on freeways not only carry milk and other liquids, but also occasionally pure milk chocolate (!) As the story was related to me, when this chocolate tanker truck made it's delivery and pumped out all the goods, the tanker remnants were up for grabs. The driver, a friend of my friend, hauled them out. My friend ended up with some 5 plus pounds of it and bequeathed me a portion.

I am delighted by this story for many reasons. Beyond the sheer willy-wonka quality of it (chocolate being pumped out of a truck!) is this idea of a resource being shared. Being raised in a small subsistence community in southeast Alaska, a regular part of life was gathering and sharing goods (salmon, berries, etc.). I like to think of my hunk of chocolate in a similar (big city) way and am so pleased that it found it's way to me.

It is a wonderful problem to have too much chocolate. For a couple of cool late winter evenings, I whipped up mugs of decadent hot chocolate. This still left the large majority of chocolate and I decided the perfect home for it was in Ina Garten's outrageous brownies.

As I get older, I learn that almost all of what my mother said to me growing up is completely true. The one glaring exception to this is her advice on brownies. My mother (a former home economics teacher, skilled baker and all-around resourceful person) advised me that making brownies from scratch was not worth it. She said that all baked goods are best when homemade, with the glaring exception of brownies. As a result, for years, I made box mix brownies. (To be clear, I did dress them up by studding with gorgeous hazelnuts, but yes, I confess to box mix brownies.)

My big sister was the first one to shatter this falsehood. On one of our rambling weekend phone calls she shared she had made Ina's outrageous brownies and they were, in fact, outrageously good. I countered with 'but Mom says it's not worth making your own brownies' and my sister assured me these were worth it.

So, I made the outrageous brownies and the spell was broken. The chocolatey depth of them is ridiculous. I think it is owing to the fact that they contain over 2 pounds of chocolate but only 1 1/4 cup of flour. These brownies are not messing around. And a tanker truck full of chocolate is not messing around either and therefore, these two belong together.

chocolate tanker brownies

1 pound unsalted butter
1 pound semisweet chocolate, chopped
12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
6 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
6 extra-large eggs
3 tablespoons instant coffee granules
2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups chopped walnuts (optional)

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 12x18x1-inch baking sheet.

2) Melt together the butter, 1 pound of chocolate chips, and the unsweetened chocolate in a medium bowl over simmering water. Allow to cool slightly.

3) In a large bowl, stir (do not beat) together the eggs, coffee granules, vanilla, and sugar. Stir the warm chocolate mixture into the egg mixture and allow to cool to room temperature.

4) In a medium bowl, sift together 1 cup of flour, the baking powder, and salt. Add to the cooled chocolate mixture.

5) Toss the walnuts (if using) and 12 ounces of chocolate chips in a medium bowl with 1/4 cup of flour, then add them to the chocolate batter (tossing in flour first helps to keep them from sinking to the bottom of the pan). Pour into the baking sheet.

6) Bake for 20 minutes, then rap the baking sheet against the oven shelf to force the air to escape from between the pan and the brownie dough. Bake for about 15 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Do not overbake! Allow to cool thoroughly, refrigerate, and cut into 20 large squares. (20 squares would be enormous brownies. I get about double that out of this batch.)