Orange Blossom Pancakes

During my trip to New Zealand, my sister in law and I went to a fantastic little coffee shop, Atlas in Ponsonby, where we had some out of this world pancakes. We had only dropped in to have a coffee on our shopping expedition of Kitchen shops around the Ponsonby area. However when we saw the menu, well what can I say - it was destiny. We had to give the pancakes a try.

They where Orange blossom pancakes served with seasonal fruit and natural yogurt. Talk about yummy!

When I returned to Australia, I had to try and recreate the recipe, so went on the search for orange blossom water which is not as easy as you would think to find. I ended up finding some at a little turkish cafe/supermarket. 

I couldn't resist opening the bottle to have a smell on the way home, I was expecting a beautiful orange zesty smell, boy oh boy was I wrong, the stuff stinks, I mean it smells really, really bad. It smells like old ladies - kind of musty. Oh well I thought I spent $5 on this bottle I may a well see what its like. All the way through making the pancakes I was still unsure if I should use it as I wanted beautiful tasting pancakes, but I persisted, and I'm glad I did as the taste is subtle but slightly there and gives the pancakes a great orange taste, that the orange juice alone doesn't give. So when you make them you may think you can leave out the orange blossom water, but don't!! Consider yourself warned, or you won't get the full flavour.

Orange Blossom Pancakes

1 cup buttermilk

3/4 cup juice from an orange

1 egg

60g butter (melted)

1 teaspoon orange water

1/3 cup of sugar

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

Butter to fry

Place the buttermilk, orange juice, egg, butter and orange blossom water into a bowl and whisk to break up the egg and combine the ingredients. Sift in the flour and baking soda and whisk until all the ingredients have combined and you have a thickish batter. 

Heat a non stick pan with a little butter, use a 1/3 measuring cup to scoop up the mixture and pour into the saucepan, when the mixture starts to form little bubbles, flip it over, when cooked remove from the heat. Add a little more butter and repeat.

Makes 7 large pancakes