Breakfast Club - Smug Pancakes with Peach and Rosewater Curd

After my disappointment of last weekends Pancakes I retired to the couch to catch up on some of my Sky+ viewing.  By pure chance I had recorded an episode of Nigella Express where she made pancakes for her daughter and friends, using a pancake mix she had already prepared.  This was a true light bulb moment for me!  And this morning the mix was put to the test ~ it passed in flying colours, so I have renamed them 'Smug Pancakes'

Smug Pancakes
For The Pancake Mix
600g flour
3 tbsp baking powder
2 tsp bicarb of soda
1 tsp salt
45g vanilla caster sugar

Mix all the ingredients together and store in a jar.

When ready to make the pancakes, proceed as below.

Make The Batter And The Pancakes
For each 150g pancake mix, add and whisk together
1 egg
250ml semi skimmed or full fat milk
15ml melted butter

Heat a flat griddle or pan with no oil.

Spoon drops of 1 1/2 - 2 tbsp of batter onto the hot griddle or into the pan and. when bubbles appear on the surface of the little pancakes, flip them over to make them golden brown on both sides.  a minute or so should do it.

Makes approx 15 pancakes
Nigella Express

These pancakes were soooooooooo good.  Really light and delicate.  If I'm being fussy then they were still a little on the flat side of fluffy, but they were a definite improvement on last weekends pancakes.  That said, I did make a couple of modifications which may have resulted in the finished product not being quite the same as they had been on the TV show.  I didn't add the melted butter, but only because I knew they were being served with curd, I figured there was enough butter on the offering already!  This did mean that the first two pancakes stuck fast to the non stick pan which is now soaking in the sink.  I ended up using fry lite in between batches to make sure they didn't stick.  Next time though I'll go whole hog and add the butter.  My batter seemed much runnier than Nigella's had on the show, so next time I think I'll cut back on the amount of milk.  I also added a bit more sugar than Nigella's recipe, I like sweet pancakes and the mix tasted a bit salty on first tasting.

This morning the pancakes were served with curd.  Passionfruit curd is a given these days ;0)
But with a couple of punnets of peaches in my fruit bowl needing to be eaten ASAP, I got to wondering about peach curd.  There were a few different recipes to choose from after a quick Internet search, all but one using lemon as one of the key ingredients.  My only problem with lemon in curds is that it can tend to overpower the flavour of the other ingredients, at the end of the day if I want to eat a curd that tastes like lemon then I'll make lemon curd!  The recipe below still uses lemon juice but in much less quantities than the others, and it had the added flavour of Rosewater which sparked my interest.

Peach and Rosewater Curd
4 egg yolks
2/3 cup sugar
1 cup fresh peach puree (put them in the blender or food processor to make)
lemon juice to taste, about 1 tsp
1/2 teaspoon rosewater (use regular water if you can't find this)
90g butter

Beat the egg yolks with the sugar, peach puree, lemon juice, and rosewater.

Place over simmering water and stir constantly until thickened.

Remove from heat and beat in butter, bit by bit.

Strain well and chill.

Use on cake, ice cream, scones etc.
 
Group Recipes
 

 
I pureed the peaches with the skin on and then strained them, as much as I liked the pink flecks running through the puree I wasn't so sure it would look that appealing in the finished curd.  I'm really pleased with the end result though, it tastes amazing! While the peach is the main flavour the addition of the rosewater has added a little exotic touch to it at the same time.  When spooned over the pancakes I was in seventh heaven, it was a proper girly breakfast!