Today was Lumpy Pancake Day- it wasn’t on my calendar as such and as far as I know, no one officially designated it as lumpy Pancake Day, but sometimes you have to re-invent the calendar to suit your own nefarious purposes. In honor of the imaginary holiday, I cooked Blackberry Pancakes.

The freezer is full of blackberries picked right in front of the house a couple of days ago, so it seemed like a great idea to put them to use in everyone’s favorite breakfast. I don’t have any pancake mix lying around the house or hiding in the cupboards, so I used a recipe from the Betty Crocker Cookbook.

The recipe called for flour, an egg, milk, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Because I was planning on eating the pancakes with maple syrup, I left out the sugar. After mixing up the ingredients and adding two handfuls of berries in, I heated up the griddle (ok, I’ll be honest- it was a run-of-the-mill aluminum pan which might eventually kill me as the aluminum seeps out). Then, I put a couple of slabs of butter in frying pan, and got it heated up enough for my pancakes.

Just like my mom taught me as a kid, I waited for little bubbles to appear before flipping the pancakes that were truthfully looking more than a little raggedy in the pan. I don’t have a gas burner and it took what seemed like 23 minutes for the first pancakes to be ready for flipping. With a flourish, I brandished my rubber spatula and flipped the pancakes and then proceeded to wait another 23 minutes for them to cook (and yes, smarty pants, the burner was turned on high enough).

I took out a plate and put the lumpy Blackberry Pancakes on it and presented it to my husband (who is truthfully the cook in the family). After he finished complaining about the mess I made (which wasn’t all that bad) and suspiciously eyed the lumpy pancakes on his plate, I asked him if he wanted to eat them now or later. He was hungry and opted for the first option.

I wasn’t nervous, but knew that they weren’t my best pancakes ever. The color was all wrong- the pancakes were pasty-white with bleeding berries spreading out like varicose veins. I was so hungry for my own pancakes that I failed to wait the requisite 23 minutes for the other side to cook enough and had to endure a bite or two of raw pancake batter- the Horrors, the Horrors. Alas- I guess that’s why I’m writing for cookingbadly.com and not another food site.

For a crazy science look at pancakes, check out THIS.