Spelt Pancakes

I've found a new favourite pancake recipe.

I've tried many pancake recipes over the years. My first favourite was the one my Mom used to make for us when we were kids. My house definitely wasn't the Bisquick kind, and this pancake is full of whole-wheat flour, wheat germ and cornmeal. It's from a Jane Brody cookbook that is literally falling apart - the book is now kept together with an elastic band and the page with the pancake recipe can be slid out as a single sheet of paper.

Those pancakes are delicious and healthy, but on the downside, they have many ingredients, so aren't exactly a throw-together recipe. (In fact, I remember my sister and I used to laugh about the thought of whipping these up for before-school breakfasts, as Jane suggests. Weekday breakfasts were toast, frozen waffles, or cereal. That's it.)

 
When J and I lived in our apartment in Charlottetown I started making other pancakes recipes. There were some good oat and walnut pancakes from a Moosewood cookbook, but the recipe I liked best was from Nigella Lawson's book Feast. They're called scotch pancakes, and they have only a few ingredients so they're easy to make fast.

I’ve been making Nigella’s pancakes for the past three years. Until a few weeks ago. That’s when pancakes seemed to hit the food blogosphere in a few different places all at once. I saw this recipe first, and the writer's thoughtful and beautiful post, combined with the simplicity of the recipe, convinced me to try them.

I was not disappointed. They are easy to put together, tasty and healthy. The spelt flour gives me them a nice nutty flavour, and with no sugar they are the perfect foil for a dousing of maple syrup. But I think the best part is that they cook up super fast in the pan and get nice and brown, the way good pancakes are supposed to look. I hate standing at the stove for ages when it's Sunday morning and all I want to do is sit down with the newspaper and a cup of tea, and admire the way the morning sun hits the kitchen table. It can be one of the most peaceful moments of the week. So why spoil it with too much cooking time? These pancakes are fast. Like, you-need-to-watch-them-so-they-don't-burn fast. That’s my kind of pancake.

This is now my go-to pancake recipe, but who knows how long that will last. What kind of pancakes do you like?

As the original recipe says, I think these would be good with all kinds of fruits. I'd like to try frozen blueberries next. When I added the apple slices you see in the photo above, that side of the pancake didn't really cook enough for me, so I think I'd prefer little fruits mixed in.