Apple Crunch Pancakes

It's fun trying to recreate something I've eaten. One recent experiment came pretty close. During a recent visit to Georgia to meet Bill's cousin Richard & his wife (our cousin-in-law) Gigi, we had brunch at a place we'd not heard of before, J. Christopher's. It's a small chain, serving breakfast and lunch only, with locations mostly in the Atlanta area. We liked it a lot.They're expanding through the southeast, so maybe one will show up in Knoxville. You can never have too many places serving a good breakfast.

Everything comes on Fiesta Ware, which I love. Here's my mushroom, spinach, and swiss cheese omelet, grits, English muffin, and big mug of Constant Comment tea.

Except for the tea, Richard had the same brunch as I did. Bill & Gigi ordered blueberry crunch pancakes.

These were so delicious I wanted to see if I could make them. I think I came pretty close, especially considering we didn't have any blueberries.  Here's what I used.

Buckwheat pancake mix.

Granola + chopped Granny Smith apples, my stand-in for the blueberries.

Here's the method. Pour batter onto the griddle. Sprinkle granola and fruit on pancakes. When bubbles appear, flip pancakes very carefully so that you don't lose the granola and fruit when you flip.

If I'd had blueberries, I think my pancakes would have been almost identical to those at J. Christopher's. I believe blueberries would be better because they're juicier than the apples.

A warming drawer is handy when making batches of pancakes.

For the last batch, I decided to see what would happen if I threw the granola and apples into the batter instead of sprinkling them on top before flipping. Hmmm. There are granola and apples in that pancake--somewhere.

Turns out the sprinkle then flip method is essential to producing good blueberry (or apple) crunch pancakes. That's what we're having.