Cinnamon Hazelnut Pancakes with Pineapple Ginger Syrup
Feb. 16th, 2009
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By Dana McMahan
FoodConnect Louisville
foodconnect.com@gmail.com
Cinnamon Hazelnut Pancakes with Pineapple Ginger Syrup
Have you ever gone out and spent a small fortune on ingredients for a special meal and woken up the next morning with leftovers of unusual items staring at you? After our Valentine’s night dinner of Korean Barbecue glazed portabellas, we had numerous bits and bobs left. Among them was half of a pineapple and a partially used ginger root. As I sipped my coffee and rummaged through some cookbooks I’d picked up at the library, my husband announced he was making pancakes. I usually don’t indulge in pancakes, trying to make an effort at breakfast to start my day right with oatmeal, yogurt or whole grain cereal. Boring, I know. But when I heard pancakes, a pineapple-shaped lightbulb went off in my head. Pineapple syrup!
I ran for the kitchen and placed myself squarely in the way of my husband who’d pulled out our sticky Joy of Cooking and was going about the serious business of making perfect, fluffy pancakes. “Set some batter aside for me,” I told him, as he didn’t want to mess with the basics when it came to his Sunday breakfast.
I stirred a bit of cinnamon and some chopped hazelnuts into my batter, then started on my syrup. I had never made anything of the sort, but it seemed pretty logical to just put some diced pineapple, butter, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and just a splash of brandy in the pot. I gave it a stir once in a while and waited until it began to take on a thick, syrup-like appearance (about half an hour) and proclaimed it done.
Then, because there’s nothing you can’t improve with a poached egg on top, I poached one of our beautiful farm eggs while I cooked up my special pancakes.
Everything went onto a plate just long enough for a photo op, and I demolished it. The warm, sweet, slightly spicy syrup was amazing as it soaked into the toasty, nutty pancakes. And, just like I knew it would, the poached egg added the finishing touch.
The next time you have pineapple on hand, try this for a special breakfast:
Pineapple Ginger Syrup
• 1 cup fresh pineapple, chopped
• 4 tablespoons brown sugar
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 2 teaspoons fresh ginger, minced
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 splash brandy
Add all ingredients to a medium heavy pan.
Simmer on medium heat, stirring occasionally for 30 minutes.
Dana has eaten her way from Inverness to Istanbul, and from Monaco to Morocco. A food and travel writer, she lives to explores the world and tell stories of foods discovered and meals devoured in far-flung lands. She once hand-carried a tagine across three continents in order to recreate a Moroccan feast, her backpack smells of spices, and she has been known to smuggle butter home from Paris. Her most recent adventure was learning all about the duck at Camp Confitt in Gascony, France. When at home in Louisville she dishes on restaurant news for her column in the Courier Journal.
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