Big Arse Brown Ale Banana Peanut Butter Choc Chip Muffins

As per my last post, today I am celebrating Brown Ale Day. What's a celebration without a bit of cake, right?

I do realise that my last recipe using brown ale also used banana, and was essentially a cake, but when I stumbled upon this recipe for Banana and Peanut Butter Muffins I had to try it...with the added bonus of brown ale. What caught my attention with this recipe is that it uses no eggs. I replaced the milk with beer, so if you also leave out the choc-chips, or use a non-dairy version, these are in fact...vegan!

I haven't baked sans eggs before. To be honest, I didn't really know what part eggs played in the baking process, but after some brief research it seems they bind, add moisture and some leavening. Further research into vegan baking seemed to indicate you can compensate for this with banana and some extra baking powder. Beer also has a bit of a leavening effect, so I decided it was worth a try.

The brown of choice for this was the Prickly Moses Tailpipe. Self described as a 'big ass brown', I'm pretty sure these muffins are going to make my arse bigger.

Never a frown...

(Makes about 12 muffins)

1 cup all-purpose flour

2/3 cup wholemeal flour 

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3 small ripe bananas (or 2 large)
2 heaped teaspoons baking powder 

3/4 cup brown ale 

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter 

3 tablespoons vegetable-based oil (I used a light olive oil)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla 

3/4 cup dark chocolate chips

...with Golden Brown.

Preheat oven to 180C degrees. Grease or line your muffin tin.

In one bowl, mix the flours, baking powder, brown sugar, salt and cinnamon (ie all the dry things). 

In a seperate bowl, mash the bananas, then add the other wet ingredients -  the brown ale, peanut butter, oil, and vanilla - and mix well. 

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and combine before stirring in the chocolate chips.

Fill the muffin tin cups with mixture, and bake for 15 - 20 minutes until golden brown.

 

Despite my trepidation about cooking without eggs, the muffins rose perfectly and are light and fluffy (score one to the vegans). They are also delicious. Seriously - I can't stop eating them and can feel my arse already getting bigger. Obviously they can be enjoyed with a brown ale, or any beer at that dark end of the spectrum.

Celebrate the Sedate – Brown Ale Day

On more than a few occasions I’ve come across the opinion that brown ales are boring. I personally don’t understand why, as I love a trip down to Brown Town. Sure, they’re not choc-a-block full of hops and they are usually of a fairly average ABV. Browns are not so sour that your whole face disappears into itself. They are dark, but not so-black-even-the-white-bits-are-black. They are just….well…brown. However, a good brown ale is a pleasure to drink. Not designed to smack your in the mouth, they are laced with subtle flavours – biscuit, toffee, coffee, chocolate – all working together. No divas – just a harmonious chorus. Sure, maybe a little easy listening M.O.R., but don’t we all need that sometimes?

I guess if you’ve been scaling the heights of beer-geekery, drinking only the most extreme brews that use ALL OF THE HOPS, or boozy barrel aged imperial whatsits, or beers so smoky they’ll set your smoke alarms off, or spending some quality time with our friend Brett, a basic brown ale may seem boring, yes.  You may be suffering from palate fatigue. It’s okay – it happens to the best of us. 

Recently, in the name of health and insanity, the husband and I decided to give up beer (and all forms of fermented beverages) for a month. It had been a long, tough winter that was survived only by the process of pickling ourselves and developing a snug layer of blubbery insulation. While this booze-hiatus was a personal quest of sorts, the upside was an unexpected re-setting of the taste buds. Suddenly beers that had long been left by the wayside for being too…normal…were seen (or tasted) in a whole new light. I mention this because one of the beers the husband had not long after jumping off the wagon was the 2brothers Growler American Brown Ale. This beer is fairly regular on tap at our local, but even for a lover of the brown such as myself, I very rarely choose it. There’s just usually something more…enticing on offer. I was surprised when he ordered it…and more surprised when he exclaimed, ‘WOW – they’ve really upped the choc on this!’. I had been contemplating my own IPA and how crazy hoppy it was. But maybe it wasn't? Maybe we were just tasting the beer’s usual character but with fresh buds. 

Luckily there are plenty of Aussie brewers out there who aren’t listening to any talk of ‘boring browns’ and are producing some deliciously drinkable ales. As well as the afore mentioned 2brothers,  Mornington Peninsula Brewery, Cavalier, Black Heart, Murray’s, Jamieson Brewery, and Brew Boys all produce fantastic brown ales. Also (with impeccable timing) Holgate have just released their seasonal Nut Brown Ale brewed with macadamia nuts in the new 500ml format. Of course, if you are still of the opinion that brown=boring, there are slightly less traditional brown ales out there, such as Prickly’ Moses Tailpipe, a 7.1% ‘Big Ass Brown’, and the 2brothers James Belgian Brown, brewed with lolly bananas. Then there’s Henry Fords Girthsome Fjord from Moon Dog, can beer get more interesting than an 8% Bulgo-American Indian Brown Ale?

Every colour, as long as it's brown.

 

On a food-related note, brown ales are definitely one of the most versatile beers for both cooking and pairing. They lend themselves to both sweet and savoury dishes, and as they are so ‘boring’ and well balanced, they don’t tend to overpower with bitterness or sweetness. They can match well with pretty much any meat – stewed, roasted or barbecued  – but are also great with mushroom dishes or mild vegetarian curries and chillis. They can be used to make a tasty rarebit, or accompany your traditional ploughmen’s lunch. You can bake bread or cake with them. Seriously – browns can do it all. As it happens, my last post here was for Brown Ale Banana Bread.

So, I’ve decided to celebrate the staid awesomeness and very non-boringness of brown ales. IPA’s and Stouts have their own days, so I’m declaring October 21^st as my own personal Brown Ale Day - a day to eat, drink and think brown. I’ll be cooking some dishes with brown ale, and drinking my way though a fine selection of Australian browns, because we are a wide-brown land…and if I included browns from other countries I may end up hurting myself.

Call it collective consciousness, kismet or serendipity, but not long after I made this declaration and first put these thoughts down on paper, a very similar post appeared on Craftbeer.com. You can check out some far more articulate thoughts on brown ales by Angelo De Ieso (@BREWPUBLIC for those on the twits) in the article, Brown Ales: The Overlooked Spectrum of Beer

If you happen to be one of those who may have pooh-poohed brown ales in the past (sorry, couldn’t resist), I challenge you to have a brown ale or two, and take your own little trip down to Brown Town.

Get Down With the Brown (Ale Banana Bread)

Is there a better time for banking than a grey, wet Sunday afternoon? Autumn has hit like clockwork. The last weekend of February was spent sitting on a beach with temperatures in the high 30’s. The rain hit almost as soon as the pages of the calendar were flipped over to March 1^st.

Summer is all about barbecuing, cooking outdoors and it’s not conducive to baking. No one wants the oven on when the whole house already feels like an oven. Autumn is perfect to get back into baking mode. When it’s wet and windy out, there is nothing like filling your house with the delicious aroma of something baking to send those change-of-season blues away.

A couple of weeks ago the Brooklyn Brewery tweeted a link to this recipe for Brown Ale Banana Bread. It caught my interest. I’ve made banana bread (and muffins too) with beer before quite a few times. In the past I’ve always used a hefeweizen. With the banana and clove flavours you find in a hef it seems like the perfect beer for banana bread, and it always comes up a treat. This recipe grabbed by interest, however, because I really love brown ales. They have lovely caramel, coffee flavours and I could see how that would work in banana bread.

So, the first weekend of Autumn and the planets all aligned. We just happened to have four over ripe bananas in our fruit bowl, waiting to be baked with. We had also done a bit of a brewery tour the day before, which included Mornington Penninsula Brewery where I managed to get the last bottle of their very good brown ale. Sunday was cool and dreary and absolutely perfect for baking. 

I did make a couple of adjustments to the original recipe, as I didn’t have the exact ingredients and wanted to add a couple of things, but it still turned out to be a fairly delicious loaf of banana bread.

How come you taste so good…

1 3/4 cups wholemeal flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3-4 very ripe bananas
2 eggs
1/3 cup melted butter, margarine or oil
180ml (about half a bottle) Brown Ale
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
1/2cup walnuts

I added half a cup of walnut pieces. I love walnuts in pretty much anything, but especially in banana bread. (Added bonus - they’re good for you too.) I also added half a teaspoon of mixed spice, probably out of habit. We didn’t have any normal sugar, so I used brown – seemed fitting. I also only had wholemeal flour, and no butter, so used margarine. The way I see it, this is practically a health food. 


 …just like a banana bread should.

Preheat your oven to 175 degrees Celcius. Prepare a loaf tin by lining with baking paper.

Mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking power and soda, salt, spice, walnuts) together in a large bowl.

I had three medium bananas and one smallish one. So, I mashed the three medium and sliced the small one into 'coins'.

Add the other wet ingredients - eggs, melted margarine, beer - to the mashed banana and mix. Then, add the wet to the dry and fold through until combined. Try not to over mix, but make sure you don't have any hidden pockets of flour.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin, and place the banana 'coins' on top. Bake for 45 - 50 mins. Do the skewer test to make sure it has cooked through. 

 I was pretty surprised at how light and fluffy this turned out, considering I used wholemeal flour and sticky brown sugar. I expected it to be much denser. Its also very moist, but not overly sweet. The flavor of the beer is not strong, there is  a subtle  caramel taste and perhaps some yeastiness. It definitely is more brown in appearance than any other banana bread that I’ve baked.

I haven’t actually had any of this with beer yet. It would probably pair pretty well with more brown ale or a porter. Anything a bit darker with those nice coffee/caramel flavours.

The Temptress is a Molé

For those who may not be aware, the word molé (kind of pronounced mo-lay) means ‘sauce’ in the Mexican language. It’s a fairly generic term that covers all kinds of sauces, but outside of Mexico it tends to refer specifically to a dark chocolate brown chilli sauce, the molé poblano (poblano is a type of chilli). I’d say that the most common type of molé outside of Mexico is actually guacamole, ‘guaca’ meaning avocado. Traditionally, these sauces contain 20-30 ingredients, and can take days to prepare. They are considered a celebration food, so the effort is worth it.

One such celebration where molé is usually served is Dia de los Muertos – the Day of the Dead. This is a time where people remember and honour their dead and is usually held over two days, November 1-2. Since I first came across this holiday, I’ve found a real fascination and attraction to it. I’ve never been lucky enough to experience it first hand, but it appears to be such a colourful, happy celebration – the brightly painted sugar skulls, garlands of flowers, parades of skeletons in the streets, mariachi bands patrolling the cemeteries. In the western world, we treat death as taboo and with such bland seriousness. I find the Mexican attitude a lot…healthier? By celebrating the people who have passed on and accepting death as inevitable, there is a better appreciation for life.

Last year, I decided to cook up my own molé for Dia de los Muertos, using beer of course. Seeing as I am not Mexican, I’m wasn't too concerned about sticking to a traditional recipe. This was helpful because (a) traditional Mexican ingredients can be quite hard to find here, and (b) I had moved house a week prior to November 1st. There was no luxury of cooking for days. I’m surprised I managed to make anything more complicated than an Old El Paso kit. Traditional recipes also tend to use a lot of lard, which I’m not such a fan of. So, while not exactly traditional, this dish is still super tasty and barely takes hours, rather than days.

The beer of choice is the Holgate Temptress Chocolate Porter. It’s not uncommon for dark beers to be part of a Mole recipe, and this one has the added bonus of being a chocolate porter, enhancing the chocolate that is already added in the cooking.

Well she was just 17…

3 tablespoons oil (whatever mild-flavoured oil you have – I used light olive oil)
8 chicken thighs, or 4 legs, or an entire chicken cut into pieces, or use turkey if you have a big enough pot (turkey is more traditional, but they are bloody big birds)
1 onion, diced
1 capsicum, seeded and diced
1 poblano pepper, seeded and diced – you can use canned or dried if you don’t have access to fresh…which I don’t, so I used canned for this recipe.
3 cloves garlic, diced
2 teaspoons chilli powder (hotness dependant on your pain threshold)
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 can diced tomatoes
1/4 cup raisins
2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, chopped
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup of Holgate Temptress chocolate porter (or another dark beer - bonus points if it contains chocolate)
2 teaspoons of peanut butter
1 teaspoon of salt
60 g of dark chocolate – the darker, the better

FOR SERVING:

warm corn tortillas
sour cream
fresh coriander, chopped

…and you know what I mean*

Place a large frypan on medium heat and heat half of the oil. Add your chicken (or turkey) pieces and brown on all sides. Once that has been done, remove to a plate, cover with foil and set aside.

Add the remaining oil to the same frypan and turn the heat down slightly. Sauté the onion, capsicum, poblano chilli and garlic until soft and slightly caramelized. Stir in the spices - chilli powder, cumin and cinnamon - and cook until fragrant (about 2-3 minutes should do it).

 

Add the tomatoes, raisins, chipotle, stock, beer, peanut butter and salt. Bring to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes, stirring often.

 

Transfer the sauce into a blender or food processor and add the chocolate. The heat from the sauce should melt the chocolate, allowing it to blend in. Process until you have a consistently smooth sauce.

Now, back to your chicken. Place the pieces into a deep, heavy cooking pot and pour the blended sauce over them. Cover and simmer for about 45 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through.

Serve with warm corn tortillas, sour cream and fresh cilantro. You could also serve with rice, fresh salsa or sautéed greens.

The beer we drank with this was the excellent Mikeller Texas Ranger, which happens to be one of my fantasy beers. It’s a chipotle spiced porter, so the flavour profile of smoky, chilli heat with roasty, chocolate matches the mole pretty darn well.

* On a side note, in the Australian vernacular, the word ‘mole’ (pronounced MOLE) has a completely different meaning. I used to attend a pub bingo night where one of my favourite calls was for #17 – ‘Well she was just 17 and you know what I mean! What do I mean? She was a MOLE!’ By amazing co-incidence, there are 17 ingredients in this particular recipe.

Mad Mushroom Ragout with Gnocchi

What do you get when you combine a trio of mushrooms, a Belgian Dubbel called ‘Mad Abbot’, a Spaetzle press and a stressed out home cook? I don’t know really, but it sounds like a pretty good story…

Once upon a time there was an average home cook who liked to experiment with beer in her recipes. For no apparent reason, she had a sudden desire to try her hand at making her own gnocchi. She’d never had this urge before, but it was such a powerful need it just had to be satisfied. What sauce, though, would be the most delicious? Once again, the idea came to her out of the blue – only mushrooms would do. A mushroom stew…or maybe ragout! (Wait…I think I may have stumbled into Dr Seuss  territory here.) Now the idea was in her head, she couldn’t shake it. This dish had to be made, but she needed some help. She turned to a Mad Abbot. His roots were Belgian, although he hadn’t travelled that far…and he was sure to make the dish DUBBEL-ly good.

Okay…so my story telling skills are pretty lame. The basic details are true though. I had a burning urge to make gnocchi. I had a craving for mushrooms. I used the Mad Abbot Belgian Dubbel in the dish….and it was good. I do admit, half way through the gnocchi making I was questioning my sanity.  Why on earth did I think it would be fun or beneficial in any way? I had already made beer bread (half the batch turned into thyme and garlic rolls, half into a fig and walnut mini-loaf) and beer brownies (which were disappointing and put me off my game) that very afternoon. I was stressed out and beginning to think that ordering a pizza might be the smart thing to do. The story does have a happy ending though.


Have what it takes...


Gnocchi:

450-500g potatoes (3-4) – I’ve found conflicting information on which potatoes to use. You want something dry I believe, but if you shop in an average supermarket there may not be a huge range.
2 egg yolks
¾ cup of ‘00’ strong flour
½ tspn salt
1/8 tspn nutmeg

Ragout:

1 tablespoon butter
2 Shallots, sliced finely
4 cloves Garlic - diced
100g Mushrooms – Swiss brown
100g Mushrooms – Shitake
100g Mushrooms – Enoki or Portobello
1 tablespoon fresh Thyme
Pepper
Salt
½ cup Belgian Dubbel
½ cup Sour cream

 To do what you gotta...

The Gnocchi:

There are two ways you can go about cooking your spuds. If you have time, preheat oven to 190 degrees and bake potatoes on a bed of rock salt for 45 to 50 minutes. If, like me, you realise you would like to eat your dinner before midnight, stab your potatoes with a fork a few times and place them in the microwave with a few paper towels under them. Nuke for five minutes on high, then roll them over and replace the paper towel with some fresh stuff. Give them another 5 minutes, and then test with a skewer to make sure they are soft all the way through.

Let the potatoes cool so you don't burn yourself, and when you can handle them comfortably, cut in half and peel the skin off. If you find this difficult, just scoop out the flesh with a spoon. This is where the Spaetzle press comes in. Actually, it’s a ‘multi-purpose’ press, but you can apparently make Spaetzle with it, so I call it my Spaetzle press, just because I like saying the word Spaetzle. You can use a potato ricer (BORING) or even a food processor (LAME), OR you can stick the potato flesh in your Spaetzle press (I used the smallest…hole thingy) and squeeze the little potato worms into a large bowl.

Add the egg yolks and spices to the potatoes and mix until well combined. Now add the flour to the potato mixture, mix it in with your hands and form a dough. I can’t lie – this is super messy. Eventually it will stop sticking to your fingers and that’s when you' know it's ready. Tip the dough onto a liberally floured surface and form into a thick log, about 10cm wide. Cut into about eight even pieces, and roll out each piece into a 1 cm thick rope. You may need to keep flouring the surface and your hands during this process. Cut the dough into pieces about 1cm long, trying to keep them as even as possible and keeping in mind that they expand when cooked. Lay them on a tray and squish each piece slightly in the middle with the tines of a fork dipped in flour. Let them dry at room temperature while you make the sauce.

The Mad Mushroom Ragout:

I don’t really know what a ragout is. It just sounds better than ‘sauce’. Over a low heat melt the butter. Add shallots and cook until they begin to soften. Add garlic and cook for a minute or so. Add mushrooms and cook until they start to wilt and release their liquid. Add the beer, salt pepper and thyme. Bring to the boil, and then simmer until the liquid reduces by half. Add the sour cream and stir to combine well. Bring back to a simmer and allow to thicken.

While simmering, bring a big pot of water to the boil. Drop your gnocchi in. They only take a couple of minutes to cook and they float to the surface when done. Use a slotted spoon to scoop them up. Transfer the cooked gnocchi onto a plate and top with your ragout and some grated parmesan.

The happy ending…my gnocchi was light and pillowy like it should be. The ragout was really tasty and matched really well with the soft, gentle gnocchi. There a couple of things I’d do differently next time. I wouldn’t try making gnocchi when I’d already spent most of the day cooking. Give yourself plenty of time so you can be relaxed. While I think the taste and texture of the gnocchi was great, it looked fairly ordinary – the pieces were irregular and misshapen due to rushing through. The ragout was great, but the sour cream didn’t combine as well as it should have. There were visible white flecks through the sauce. A plain cream might be better, although it may lose some of the taste. Or perhaps I just need  to experiment with different brands of sour cream.

The husband and I drank a growler of the Bridge Road Saison Noir with this, and it worked really well. You want a darker malty beer to compliment the earthy flavours of the mushrooms, but nothing so heavy that is drowns out the delicate aspects of the dish.

The Lazarus Blog

Okay, so I haven't actually been dead, but you may (or may not) have noticed I’ve had a bit of a break from the blog. Longer than intended really. I did one of those major life things and bought a house in the hills, then moved into said house, and since then life has been kind of…different. Between the challenges that a  new home brings (like discovering a major leak in part of the roof that caused a lovely indoor waterfall effect) and tripling my work commute, the time I have to get things down on the screen has dwindled down to…not a whole lot. Most of my spare time has been spent on feathering the nest and making a start on my dream garden (OMG – I put herbs in! I put them in the ground!). Hours of my weekends have been lost to traipsing zombie-like around IKEA and furniture stores that all seem to sell the same product for roughly the same price. Bunnings has become like a second home to me.

However, there has been no break from beer. I’d even say that the stresses of moving and settling into a new home have necessitated a LOT of beer. Even though the relocation has taken us a little out of the way, we’ve found ourselves in the lucky position of having a local bar that is passionate about good beer (you can read about the wonderful Oscar’s Alehouse here), and local bottle shops that stock a reasonable range of good Australian and NZ beers. Even the local Safeway Liquor (yes, Woolworths hasn’t made it up the hill yet) stocks some Mountain Goat and Hargreaves Hill brews. We’ve also finally joined the BRB Posse, so we get some delicious brews delivered straight to our door (or at least to the top of our driveway), and we finally took that step of ordering beer online…from a shop that used to be in walking distance (hey, no walking required now – the beer will come to us!).

Why yes, I have moved to heaven.

I do admit to a fair amount of slackness on the cooking side of things though. Mainly I have been going back to the well, baking a loaf or two of beer bread, beer pizza, and seeing as it has been (kind of) Summer, doing some marinating for the BBQ.  It takes time to ponder and research new ideas, and that time has been in short supply. I’m kind of lucky that Australian Beer-lebrity Paul Mecurio has made life a little easier by releasing an entire book of beer recipes (called, not surprisingly, ‘Cooking with Beer’). The recipes are set out clearly, not too chef-y, but foody enough to be interesting to…foodies…but also easy enough to be accessible to amateurs like myself. If you don’t have a copy yet, why not? GO BUY NOW. If you know someone who likes cooking, but is not really into beer, buy one for them too. We can start a beer-food revolution, people!

I’ve also been exploring the world of beer and cheese matching, after some inspiration from the Barley’s Angels meeting in October last year. I don’t know a great deal about cheese, except that it is delicious and I like to put it in my mouth. It is fortuitous then, that beer (another delicious thing I like to put in my mouth) goes really well with cheese. Better than wine. Better than anything. So much so that the husband and I decided to forego the traditional Christmas day fare this year in favour for an all-day beer and cheese festival of awesomeness. Twelve beers, six cheeses and a whole lot of other bits and pieces on the side. Possibly the best Christmas EVER (but possibly only due to the lack of having to spend most of the day slaving over the oven).

Gratuitous cheese porn.

I’m not going to make any vows or promises I can’t keep, but I’m hoping to get back on the blogging-wagon soon and try to keep my seat. I actually have a back-log of recipes from last year that I never got around to posting, so I best start there. I also have a few new ideas forming, so hopefully they will come to fruition. Here’s a sneak peak of what I celebrated Australia Day with – Ale-soaked tofu burgers. (Recipe and rant to come!)

 

No animals were harmed in the making of this burger.

Beer for Breakfast Part 2 - Blueberry Ale Pancakes

Let’s talk about fruit flavoured beers. They’ve got fruit in them, which in my books makes them a healthy choice. Berries especially – they are full of antioxidants and stuff that will make you live forever or something. Not everyone is a fan of fruit in their beer, which is fair enough. They are a bit of a novelty, but maybe their place is in the kitchen?

You could make pancakes with almost any beer probably, but fruit beers add that lovely fruity (healthy) twist that works really well in the pancake format. I’ve made these before with a few raspberry beers – there are a couple of good ones that are pretty easy to get your hands on – but I was pretty excited to find Prickly Moses had made a blueberry hefweizen. Blueberries are by far my favourite of the berry kingdom.

The theory is that the carbonation in the beer makes the pancakes light and fluffy. I’ve actually found this isn’t always the case with the raspberry beers, but it’s entirely possible that I’ve been doing it wrong. Sometimes beer pancakes tend to be a bit flatter and have a more chewy texture – they’re not tough, but have more bite to them. Having said that, I actually like the beer pancakes better. Maybe it’s just knowing that there is delicious craft beer inside them – it warms the cockles or something.

However, the blueberry hef actually did make for fluffy pancakes. Could it be the difference between blueberries and raspberries? Or maybe the hefeweisen influence?Either way, they puffed right up and tasted pretty delicious.

The pancake recipe I used is from here, but I didn't have butter, so subbed with yogurt. It makes enough for two and it also leaves a little beer in the bottle which you can use to make a beery syrup to go on top.


The makings of a good start:


Pancakes:
1 cup plain flour, sifted
¼ cup white sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1 cup of Blueberry Hefeweizen
(Or Raspberry Ale)
2 Tablespoons plain yogurt


Blueberry syrup:
Remainder of the beer
(about ½ cup)
1 ½ Tablespoons blueberry jam
2 Tablespoons of honey

Fresh or frozen blueberries

(If you are using Raspberry beer, just substitute the blueberry jam for raspberry)



Getting it together right:

For the Pancakes, mix together the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt) in a large bowl. Combine the wet ingredients together (egg, beer and yogurt) in another bowl or jug. Add the wet to the dry and whisk until all the lumps are gone and the ingredients are combined. How easy is that!

Heat oil or butter in a frypan over medium heat. Spoon or pour batter onto the pan and cook until bubbles appear on the surface of the pancakes. Flip and cook until finished on the other side.

For the Blueberry Syrup, combine ingredients in a small pot and reduce over medium heat by half, stirring so it doesn’t stick or burn.

Pour the syrup over your pancakes. If blueberries are in season, scatter some over the top for an added extra boost of berry goodness, or use frozen ones.

Would it be irresponsible to suggest a beer to drink with breakfast? I guess you could be having pancakes at any time of the day. Still, a good Saison would go wonderfully with this at any time of the day. Try the Bridge Road Saison.