Coconut Cornmeal Pancakes with Homemade Pluot Syrup Recipe

What’s a pluot?—you ask. Only the finest fruit on earth—I say! This mad genius combination of the apricot and plum creates a fruit that’s sweet, chin-dripping juicy, and with the best flavor profiles of both parents.

Three years ago, my husband and I planted a happy pluot tree in our edible backyard. The tree must love it here, because it’s already taller than me, its branches stretching wide enough to provide a patch of shade in our otherwise sun-soaked space. They say a fruit tree takes three to five years to produce fruit, and this pluot tree burst through right on schedule with over 26 pounds of fruit this year. That’s more than 65 individual fruits!—a great haul from such a young tree.

With this many pluots, I’ll be turning them into everything from jam and liquor to sundried snacks for winter. What a gift!

This morning, I took merely four pluots and turned them into a rich, divine syrup for pancakes. What a joyful way to start my day: all dressed up in pretty pink sprinkled with flakes of snowy coconut.

These pancakes fluff up nicely and brown with a slight crisp as they cook. The cornmeal adds a lovely crunch while the coconut flour lends a gentle sweetness. These pancakes are also good served with local wildflower honey from your farmers’ market.

Coconut Cornmeal Pancakes with Homemade Pluot Syrup Recipe

Coconut Cornmeal Pancakes Recipe
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup coconut flour
¼ cup cornmeal
¼ cup oat bran
4 Tablespoons coconut sugar (substitute: 2 Tablespoons brown sugar)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1 ½ cups buttermilk
3 Tablespoons melted butter
½ Tablespoon vanilla extract
2 Tablespoons unsweetened flaked coconut to garnish

Farmers’ Market/Garden Ingredients: cornmeal (I picked mine up at a market in Bloomington, Illinois), eggs, butter
California-grown Ingredients: buttermilk
Supermarket Ingredients: flour, coconut flour, oat bran, coconut sugar, baking powder & soda, vanilla, coconut

Instructions
Preheat a skillet on the stovetop at medium heat.

Combine dry ingredients (flour through baking soda) in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, combine eggs, buttermilk, butter, and vanilla with a whisk. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir to combine.

Using a ¼-cup scoop, add pancake batter to the preheated, lightly greased skillet. When bubbles begin to break through the surface of the center of the pancake, use a spatula to flip the pancake. Cook on the second side for a few minutes, until the surface of the pancake is golden brown on both sides.

If you want to keep the pancakes warm and serve them all at once, set them in a single layer in an oven that has been preheated to 200 degrees.

Homemade Pluot Syrup Recipe
4 pluots, diced and sliced (I use a combination of different size cuts to add some variation in the sauce)
½ cup organic sugar
¼ cup water
Juice from 1 lemon
5 cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick

Farmers’ Market/Garden Ingredients: pluots, lemon
Supermarket Ingredients: sugar, spices

Place all ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir to combine. Allow mixture to come to a slow boil, stirring often. Then reduce heat to low and allow to simmer, stirring often, for about 20 minutes, or until liquid has reduced by nearly half and becomes thick like a syrup. Allow to cool for about 5 to 10 minutes before serving. Syrup will thicken a bit more as it cools.

Serve warm syrup over Coconut Cornmeal Pancakes. Top the syrup with a light sprinkle of coconut flakes.

Yield: 4 servings, or 10 pancakes and about 2 cups of syrup.

Want more pluots?
Together in Food makes pluot jam.

In Erika’s Kitchen makes pluot clafoutis.

Gimme Some Oven makes a pluot blueberry crisp.