hotcakes for breakfast.

You won't usually find me in the kitchen on a Sunday morning because they're always spent with the family scouring around the island for good food. Since Dad didn't seem well enough this weekend to spend his day outdoors, I decided to make breakfast for once.

Whilst thinking of what to prepare, I recalled the ricotta hotcakes that I had at Bill's when holidaying in Sydney more than a month back. I've always wanted to try making them because D liked them so much.

Bill Granger's famous recipe calls for the all essential ricotta but I couldn't find it at my friendly neighbourhood store. In its place, I added dried cranberries. I also added a little bit of maple syrup to the batter just to give it the fragrance and a tiny bit of sweetness to its otherwise, sugarless batter. Instead of milk, I used buttermilk as I've read that it makes the hotcakes taste better. As a result, the baking powder had to be replaced with baking soda to neutralise the acidity in the buttermilk. I also smashed a Cadbury Crunchie Bar and mixed it together with butter as some websites had suggested, to make the butter for the hotcakes. Bill's hotcakes recipe is a great base and I say, be creative with the ingredients. Most likely, you won't go wrong.

Cranberry Hotcakes with Chocolate Honeycomb Butter & Maple Syrup (makes 8 hotcakes)















Ingredients
handful of dried cranberries
1 tbsp maple syrup
¾ cup buttermilk
4 eggs, seperated
1 cup plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
butter, for cooking

To serve
chocolate honeycomb butter
maple syrup
bananas, sliced (optional)
dried cranberries (optional)

Chocolate Honeycomb Butter
150g unsalted butter, softened
50g Cadbury Crunchie Bar, smashed

• Prepare the butter first. Mix the softened unsalted butter with the smashed Crunchie Bar and store in the refrigerator. If you like a bit of crunch when eating the hotcakes, smash the Crunchie Bar coarsely.
  

• Place the maple syrup, buttermilk and the egg yolks in a mixing bowl and combine well.
  

• Sift the flour, baking soda and salt together into a bowl and add to the buttermilk mixture. Mix until combined.

• Place the egg whites in a clean dry bowl and beat until stiff peaks form. Fold the egg whites through the batter in 2 batches.

• Fold the dried cranberries into the batter gently.

• Lightly grease a non-stick frying pan with a little bit of butter and drop approximately 3 tbsps of batter per hotcake into the pan (I used a small non-stick pan usually used for frying sunny side-ups). Cook over low to medium heat until both sides of the hotcakes turn light golden brown.

• Transfer to a plate and assemble with sliced bananas, dried cranberries, the chocolate honeycomb butter and a splash of maple syrup. Be careful not to drench the hotcakes with the syrup as the butter already gives it quite a bit of sweetness.

Bon Appétit!