Blueberry and bacon pancakes (with a drizzle of chocolate sauce)

Saturday mornings. Pancakes. A pairing that never grows old. My friend Emily and I had been talking about making authentic American pancakes at-some-point-in-the-future for about a month and this Saturday it at last happened.

Emily is one of those girls that eats amazingly so when she produced a jar of coconut oil to make a chocolate sauce I wasn't surprised - what I was surprised about was how flipping delicious it was considering it is so much better for you than any other chocolate sauce I could have dreamt up! She also makes a cracking cappuccino. Dream girl right there.

To make a batch of 9(ish) American blueberry and bacon pancakes you will need:
200g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
300ml milk
Little pack of blueberries - ours was 200g
A little butter for the frying pan

2 strips of bacon per person

Chocolate sauce
2 tbsp coconut oil (melted)
1/2 tbsp agave syrup or maple syrup
2 tbsp cocoa powder (to taste)

Sieve the flour and baking powder into a bowl and create a little well in the centre. Whisk the egg and milk together and pour into the well, a little at a time. Keep whisking and adding until all the liquid is added. The mix should be fairly thick - leaving a trail when the whisk is lifted kind-of-thickness. Throw in about 80% of the blueberries to the batter, keeping a few behind to adorn the plate.

Turn on the grill and place your bacon beneath - keep an eye on it, flip when the other side needs cooking - you know the drill. You want super-crisp American-style bacon for these pancakes.

If you want a chocolate sauce make it at this point - it's just a case of melting the coconut oil, pouring into a mug and whisking in the cocoa powder and a squeeze of syrup. Easy peasy.

Warm your frying pan and add in a knob of butter. Ladle in enough batter to create a medium-sized pancake. It's best to do these one at a time. When bubbles start to appear in the centre of your pancake you know it's ready to turn - flip over and cook on the otherside.
Pop the cooked pancake between two plates to keep warm and repeat the cooking process until all the pancake batter is used up.

When you're ready to plate up, pop a pancake on the bottom, one bacon rasher, another pancake, bacon rasher and the final pancake (3 pancakes per person is plenty). Throw the rest of the blueberries on the plates, drizzle the chocolate sauce on top and try to disguise your squeals of pleasure as you dig into the pancake stack.

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