Will fresh cranberries play well with pancake batter? Preliminary findings.

As I was trying to get motivated to crawl out of bed and make breakfast for my family, I tweeted:

I’m about to make pancakes. I have fresh cranberries. Is putting fresh cranberries in some of the pancakes a good idea or a bad idea?

— Janet D. Stemwedel (@docfreeride) January 26, 2013

Of course, I got a variety of opinions in response:

@docfreeride Not sure pancakes cook long enough for that to work. Maybe if you chop them first?

— Michele Banks (@artologica) January 26, 2013

@docfreeride depends on how you want them to taste.Will you be adding a ton of sugar?

— Vance Ricks (@ricksva) January 26, 2013

@docfreeride As a reforming chemist you ought to know the effect of wet berries in batter. I don’t, but I’m betting soggy flapjacks.

— Ben Reynolds (@thebenreynolds) January 26, 2013

@docfreeride Bad. Fresh cranberries need too long too cook, and are too bitter on their own. Cook separately with some sugar to make syrup!

— MarkCC (@MarkCC) January 26, 2013

@docfreeride Generally good, but could make pancakes a bit tart, poss soggy. What abt heating cberries w/ some spice/sugar for topping?

— Melissa J Bodeau (@MJBwrites) January 26, 2013

@docfreeride what about a fresh cranberry and orange relish for pancakes?

— Lindsay Waldrop (@invertenerd) January 26, 2013

@artologica @docfreeride I would opt for pancakes w cranberry (& apple, if available) chutney.

— biochem belle (@biochembelle) January 26, 2013

As you might expect, I set some limits on how far I was prepared to go with this:

@biochembelle @artologica I’m dragging my ass out of bed to make pancakes, not 3 course meal. Not making cranberry chutney. Not even relish.

— Janet D. Stemwedel (@docfreeride) January 26, 2013

But, in the interests of science, I committed to sharing what I learned:

OK, after your cranberries in pancakes point/counterpoint, am getting out of bed. Will consider options as I make batter, implement, report.

— Janet D. Stemwedel (@docfreeride) January 26, 2013

So, as promised, here’s the report.

I started with my standard pancake batter.

Beat together:

2 cups buttermilk (or you can use 4 teaspoons of lemon juice and/or vinegar to sour 2 cups of milk, or 2 cups of plain soymilk)
4 eggs
2 tablespoons granulated sugar

Sift together:

2 cups flour (I use “white whole wheat” flour)
1.5 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
0.75 teaspoon salt

Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until well incorporated, but don’t over-beat. (It’s OK if the batter is a little lumpy.) Add a bit of milk or water to thin it if it’s thicker than you like to spread the way a pancake batter should on the griddle.

While the griddle is heating up, melt 4 tablespoons of butter (half a stick). Cool it slightly, then pour into the batter and stir to incorporate it.

Now, the usual procedure for pancakes at Casa Free-Ride is that half of the batter is made into plain pancakes and the other half gets blueberries added to the pancakes when they’re on the griddle.

We’ve been using Trader Joe’s frozen organic wild blueberries. They are teeny tiny little things. I pour a bunch into a custard cup, thaw them with tap water, then pour the water off.

The very best tool for getting them from the custard cup to the proto-pancake without too much residual water/juice being slopped along is a bar-spoon.

The little holes at the end of the bar-spoon get the draining done.

I decided to try three distinct approaches to the fresh cranberries.

Option 1: Halved

Obviously, this was the easiest preparation. I just rinsed some cranberries, cut them in half, and then added them to the proto-pancakes on the griddle before they were flipped in the same way I typically add blueberries.

The predictions here were that maybe the cooking time would be insufficient, leaving the cranberries too raw and tart, or that they would make the pancakes too soggy on account of juice coming out of the cranberries as they cooked.

However, it’s worth noting that the raw cranberries are notably not juicy. They’re actually pretty dry. And, on the griddle, the halved cranberries didn’t have any observable effect on the texture of the cooking pancakes.

Option 2: Chopped and sugared

Here, I rinsed some fresh cranberries, chopped them coarsely, and stirred in a bit of granulated sugar. Then I used a wee little spoon to distribute the cranberry fragments to the proto-pancakes on the griddle before they were flipped.

There was some suggestion that chopped and sugared cranberries might lead to better results because the smaller fragments would have a better chance of cooking sufficiently by the time the pancakes were done cooking, and the extra sugar would balance any residual tartness from the cranberries not having all that long to cook.

However, I observed that the pancakes with the chopped and sugared cranberries did become a bit soggier on the griddle. That extra sugar was drawing the juice out of the cranberries!

Raising the flame under the griddle seemed to take care of this problem, though.

Option 3: Sauced

Finally, I rinsed a bunch of fresh cranberries, halved them, and put them in a tea cup. I squeezed in the juice of a small navel orange, added a few tablespoons of granulated sugar, and popped it in the microwave.

I had planned to microwave it for a couple minutes, but it just about boiled over before a full minute of cooking. It looked and tasted like a cranberry sauce.

It was thick. If you want a pourable sauce, probably adding some water or additional orange juice would thin it nicely.

So, how did they taste?

I liked option 1 the best, and not just because it was the easiest. The pancakes had a nice tart kick to them and the same pleasing pancake texture that our plain and blueberry pancakes have.

My better half preferred option 2. The ones cooked on high enough heat had a good pancake texture (although the ones cooked at lower griddle temperature were just a little soggier than optimal). The cranberry flavor was very prominent in these pancakes, but the tartness of the cranberries was toned down by the sweetness of the sugar.

The sprogs were big fans of option 3. For very little labor, it’s a good fruity sauce that plays well with plain pancakes (as well as with pancakes that have blueberries or cranberries cooked into them). For my own tastes, it was just a little too sweet; I might back off on the granulated sugar. The sprigs, on the other hand, might have included just a bit more sugar in the preparation. This is the kind of thing you have to fight out with your fellow breakfast eaters, I guess.