Peaches divine, please be mine
Who doesn’t love pancakes? Light, fluffy and oh-so-versatile, they can be adapted to sweet or savoury dishes (though I stop short of serving a rump steak on top of a buckwheat pancake, as once witnessed at the pancake parlour!) and are generally just a marvellous way to start, sustain or end the day 
And whilst I thought I made a decent pancake, it wasn’t till I first tried my hand at buttermilk pancakes that I realized just how fluffy, delicate and moist they really could be! However, though that recipe was super-tasty, the pancakes were a bit too moist for my liking, and hence I kept my eye out for another recipe that would give me a product with a little more body without sacrificing that delightful airiness that had won my heart.
However, what led me to these pancakes was not this particular search, but my mother’s inability to buy stone fruits. Once a fortnight my ma usually heads out to the markets to stock up on fruit (we only buy fruit and veg from the local supermarket if extremely desperate for something right this instant). On her way out the door my sister requested that she get some peaches, so a few hours later she returned with 2kg of peaches, much to the delight of me and my siblings.
Quite the happy chappy, my brother grabbed a peach and commented that it felt a little firm. And then he washed it and bit into it. When I heard some unhappy grunting, I turned around to see the peach had become wedged in his teeth - not exactly the kind of thing that you’d expect a peach to do! Unfortunately for us, every single peach that had been bought was completely unripe and as hard as a rock!
What could be done so that we didn’t have to wait a few weeks for these peaches to reach optimal ripeness and sweetness? I started flipping through some of my old editions of the Australian Gourmet Traveller, remembering that I’d seen a special on stone fruits in one of them, and eventually came back to the buttermilk pancakes with glazed white nectarines that I had bookmarked as a recipe to try! Though I had no white nectarines, I thought the peaches would be close enough and so I decided to give it a whirl.
I did have to tweak the recipe a little as I don’t think the writer intended it to be made with unripe fruit, but in the end it worked out fine and I had a stack of gorgeously fluffy pancakes with some soft, syrupy peach segments to sit atop like a golden-pink crown of fruity goodness. I’ve no idea how many calories this may contain, but I suggest that you save it for a weekend breakfast of indulgence…perhaps with a dollop of ice cream on the side?
Buttermilk Pancakes with Glazed Peaches
(adapted from February 2007 edition of Australian Gourmet Traveller)
Ingredients
4 ripe peaches
80g pure icing sugar
Juice and zest from 1 large orange
2 tbsp Grand Marnier
Optional: Icing sugar, vanilla ice cream or creme fraiche to serve
Buttermilk pancakes
150g self-raising flour
50g pure icing sugar (not soft icing mixture!)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs, seperated
310 mL buttermilk
2 tbsp vegetable oil
20g unsalted butter
1. Sift together the flour and icing sugar and set aside. Whisk together the egg yolks, buttermilk and vanilla, then pour into the flour and whisk together to combine.
2. Beat eggwhites till you have soft peaks, then use a large metal spoon to carefully fold them into the pancake batter. Set this aside for now.
3. Peel the peaches and cut them into segments (eighths if you have large fruit, sixths if you have small). Combine the sugar, orange juice, orange zest and Grand Marnier in a large frying pan and bring to the boil.
4. Cook syrup for 1-2 minutes or till it is slightly reduced and syrupy, then add the peaches and cook them for 1-2 minutes on each side till they are softened and glazed. Remove the peaches and add 2 tbsp water to the syrup, reduce the heat to low and stir the water through till the syrup has dissolved into the water.
5. In a seperate frying pan or griddle, heat half the butter and oil over low-medium heat and fry 1/4 cup of the mixture at a time, cooking each side for 2-3 minutes or till golden brown.
6. Once the pancakes are done, serve them with a few wedges of glazed peaches on each plate, drizzling with the syrup. Serve with ice cream or cream fraiche if you want a little more decadence 
Technorati Tags: fruit, peaches, pancakes, buttermilk, recipes, breakfast, dessert
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Comments
I am such a blueberry pancake lover, but I think I now have a new to try fruit that I might just love even more, the peaches look divine atop those pancakes!
OMG! These pictures made my stomach growl like crazy! I ahve never met a pancake I did not eat…these are absolutely mouth watering..!
Your pancakes looks so good! If you didn’t tell the story behind the peach I would have said that on the picture they look juicy and just right. I made yesterday blueberry Ricotta pancakes that I will posting very soon.
Ellie these are all just incredible photos - such lovely pancakes and peaches!!! Hooray for you, turn a problem into a beauty like this makes you a genius!
I love buttermilk, it’s so underused. It sure does great things in a pancake as you’ve found out!!
They look soo yummy!!! Great pictures, makes me want to grab the screen.
Peaches… they can look deceptively lovely and appealing in the store, but alas when you get them home… hard as a rock. This is so personally frustrating that I actually wrote about this as an unexplained food mystery(why can’t we buy any ripe peaches anymore?) in a post last month! Your solution looks mighty tasty though!
Gilly - I’ve always been a blueberry pancake girlie, but I think these peaches are gonna be a bit of a regular thing
Laurie - I’m in the same boat 
It was always blueberries with pancakes for me, but the peaches are pretty darn good! Hope you like ‘em
Helen - Aww shucks! Thanks hon
Brilynn - I saw! They’re pretty tasty-lookin!
Rose - Ahh, it’s all in the cooking Will keep an eye out for your ricotta pancakes, can’t say I’ve ever given them a try!
Cheryl - Thanks hon
Tanna - LOL! I don’t know about genius, but I’m glad I decided to give this a shot
Cris - Hehehe, thanks hon
Deborah - It seems to be a bit touch and go, I think it has something to do with the big chain grocery stores keeping fruit in storage for so long, so they deliberately buy unripe fruit from farmers so they’ll last longer… but that doesn’t explain why market produce is unripe 
Freya - Cheers hon
Truffle - Aww shucks! Thanks hon
Kat - They tasted great with the pancakes too
Patricia - Hope you like it 
This looks (and reads) amazing. Love the photos. Peach season is a long way off up here, and unfortunately, we’ve more than our fair share of underripened fruit….
j
Thanks hon Darn shame about the underripe fruit, but till we’re able to grow our own, we can either find ways to use it, or just not buy :/ pity I have the willpower of a flea!
Ok… we tried this on Saturday morning!!!! It was soo good, I didn’t have the peaches though, the kids wanted chocolate syrup and I had maple syrup, hubby had it with ham (weird, but he loves it). Thanks for the great recipe!
I’m so glad you liked it Maple syrup is great with buttermilk pancakes, though these aren’t too sweet so I can understand having it with ham for the contrast in flavours My brother always likes his pancakes with a side of bacon!
Ellie, this is my favorite pancake recipe and we’ve been making it since you published. Would you mind if I posted it on my blog? With credits to you. Please let me know. Thanks so much!
[...] Original post by Ellie [...]