Easy overnight slippy peach pancakes

In association with Princes

We all have those tinned staples that are always in the cupboard. For us it’s kidney beans*, tinned tomatoes, baked beans and slippy peaches.

Slippy peaches, just to clarify, are tinned peach slices, so named by our family because when they come out of the tin they are slippy. Dur.

I always buy tinned fruit in juice because then it properly counts as fruit doesn’t it? Genuine fact there – a tin of slippy peaches like these count as two of your five a day. And tinned peaches are so GOOOOD.

Let’s face it, how often do you buy fresh peaches and get them just at the right level of ripeness, and THEN be bothered to cut them into slices to go on top of a pancake? Never. What’s more likely to happen in my house is that I buy a load of fresh fruit because Belle has watched some kind of ‘how to peel a mango with a pint glass’ life hack video on Instagram, and then two weeks later it’s sat in a mouldy pile in the fruit bowl.

For me, tinned peaches are like the frozen pea of the fruit world – why would you even bother with the faff of fresh when they taste so good and are so easy to prepare?

For the last week Belle and I have been experimenting, in partnership with Princes, switching fresh fruit for tinned. Princes tinned fruit is packed from fresh, counts towards your five a day, and means you always have fruit handy at perfect ripeness, with no waste. What’s not to love about that? As part of our challenge we’ve been making some simple breakfast recipes using tinned fruit, including slippy peach pancakes.

A weekend style breakfast for weekdays

Now when you think of homemade pancakes and fruit, you’re probably picturing a leisurely Sunday rather than a hectic weekday morning. I mean weekdays, it’s all about the school run, trying to juggle everyone leaving the house on time – no way you’d have time to make slippy peach pancakes right?

WRONG!

With my easy overnight pancake recipe you can get everything prepped the night before, so it takes less than 15 minutes in the morning to whip up your slippy peach pancakes. Even better, these pancakes actually freeze really well, so you can always cook up a big batch at the weekend, eat some fresh, and then freeze the rest.

To freeze the pancakes, just let them cool and spread them out on a tray lined with greaseproof paper. Put them in the freezer like that, and then once they are frozen you can transfer them to a freezer bag. In the morning, just pop them in the toaster to defrost them before adding your fruity topping – easy peasy!

How to make overnight pancakes

Okay, so now you’re salivating, wondering how to whip up a batch of these beauties for yourself aren’t you? Pancakes are a pretty easy thing to make to be honest, and the recipe is flexible too. We used honey to sweeten ours, but you could switch to sugar for example, or you might want to try wholewheat flour, or oats, or perhaps some cinnamon?

These pancakes aren’t massively sweet – I wanted to keep them quite plain as a base so that people could add their own toppings to taste. Our mixture was quite a brown colour because of the buckwheat flour and the vanilla powder, which has quite a dark colour.

So, you will need:

• 180g of flour – we used half white and half buckwheat
• 1 tbsp of baking powder
• Half a tsp of vanilla powder
• a pinch of salt
• 2 eggs
• 300ml of milk
• 2 tbsp of honey

Sieve the flour, vanilla and baking powder into a bowl and add the salt. In the separate jug, whisk together the milk, eggs and honey, and then gradually add this to the dry ingredients, whisking to form a nice smooth pancake batter. Cover and leave overnight in the fridge. (Note: you can use it straight away too if you want to, the overnight bit isn’t fundamental to the recipe.)

Come the morning, set the kids off getting themselves washed and dressed while you get on pancake duty. I used a couple of squirts of that spray oil, as it stops the pancakes sticking without being too much. The secret when it comes to cooking the pancakes is to not flip them too early. You’re looking for a thicker pancake rather than a crepe, and you want to wait until lots of bubbles have appeared and the edge of the pancake has started to cook. Once you do flip it, it should literally just be for a few seconds to brown the other side. Don’t get excitable and try to turn them as soon as the first bubbles appear.

Then it’s the fun bit – the toppings. For this recipe Belle and I split a tin of Princes peaches – each getting one of our five a day – and drizzled our pancakes with maple syrup, but the world is your proverbial lobster at this stage. If you wanted to pursue the tinned fruit idea, to tick off an easy portion of fruit for breakfast, I reckon that a little smear of chocolate spread would go rather nicely with some tinned mandarin segments. Or how about some tinned mango and honey?

To go with your breakfast, you could also try a smoothie made with tinned fruit. We’ve done quite a bit of smoothie experimentation in the past and tinned mangoes and peaches go very nicely with a good glug of milk.

Tinned mango with yogurt

If the pancakes haven’t convinced you, there are plenty of other ways to use tinned fruit at breakfast, even if it’s just something simple, like in this video from Princes, where you combine it with some natural Greek yogurt and seeds:

I had a go at this one for myself, as mango is one of Belle’s favourite fruits.

Mango is a tough one normally as they’re pretty expensive and for some reason I find them really hard to peel and chop. I always end up throwing loads away, so tinned mango is a great solution. Belle is always in a rush for school in the morning, as getting up is not a concept she buys into with any sort of enthusiasm, but we can make this is less than five minutes.

So there you go, two easy ways to use tinned fruit to make a quick and healthy breakfast for busy family mornings.

What’s your favourite tinned fruit? Is there something you always keep in the cupboard? What’s your favourite way to eat it?

 

*I’ve no idea why we always have kidney beans, as I hardly ever use them. I think it’s because we always had kidney beans in the cupboard when I was little, so it feels like something you OUGHT to have as a grown-up.