Sticky Date Pancakes with Butterscotch Sauce & Roasted Pears – fluffy, light pancakes, warmly spiced with cinnamon & nutmeg. Jump to Recipe
I realise this is a little late, being the day after the occasion, but yesterday was Mother’s Day here in Australia and New Zealand. Like all major holidays now, it is heavily commercially driven – shopping centres were packed with families buying flowers and treats, and baby pink Mother’s Day specials are heavily advertised- but the premise remains. Mine was in another country, but I did get a call from one of my brothers – “Claudia! What cake should I make for Mum?!”. My brothers very rarely put anything in the oven, so this is an unusual phone call. One is just starting to master chocolate self-saucing pudding, largely provoked by self-interest – now that I am no longer living at home, no one else will be making dessert! Dad even produces the occasional fruit crumble, missing the after-dinner sugar fix.
It was my mother and grandmother who started me baking. I was always interested in food, as the baby constantly grasping at whatever my parents were eating and the toddler that would climb into the cupboards of strangers in search of cookies, but they gave me the initial boost, the tools to make my own. Mum’s double chocolate muffins were a staple lunch box item – the simple mix of wet and dry, yogurt and butter with cocoa and flour, eating as many chocolate chips as possible on the way. Lemon yogurt cake was another favourite – everything into a food processor and poured into a old dented ring tin, the fluffy, zesty batter always exploding out the top for a very rustic finished product.
With Grandma it was jam stars, a basic shortbread dough cut into squares, jam dolloped in the middle and corners folded in with sticky fingers. I ventured on from there – chocolate chip cookies after school age 8, frequent french toast breakfasts, my neiman-marcus cookies in high school (nicknamed ‘Claudia cookies’ by friends), weekend breakfasts, and onto tarts and layer cakes later. I had a little notebook of handwritten recipes in wonky 12 year old script, pages stained with various unknown foods and added to with enthusiasm. I moved onto a bigger ring binder, filled with pages of photocopied recipes from cookbooks I loaned from the local library – soon the binder began exploding with the sheer thickness of paper, and there was no way I could ever try them all. The current version had to be carefully pared back and refined – I did not need 15 different versions of brownie, as good as they all looked. Old baking tins of my Dad’s mother are still used often – I sometimes wonder what she used them for, what her favourites were.
Mum isn’t a huge breakfast-in-bed person, preferring to get up and exercise before her daily fruit and muesli, so when I made these a few weeks ago on holiday it was a decadent lunch time treat. She was an outstanding hand model for these shots though! And to mum, when you read this – honestly, you couldn’t be more supportive, generous, and generally amazing, and as I get older, my appreciation for how much you do for us four only grows.
As I type this, it is bucketing down with rain on the thin roof, the windows are just beginning to fog, and although it is midday, the grey dreary skies necessitate lights inside. Ideal weather for these sticky date pancakes with butterscotch sauce & roasted pears. Light and fluffy thanks to beaten egg white, and warmly spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, the pancakes are enriched with a sticky date paste to make a brunch version of the classic pudding. Roasted pears are tender and just caramelised, but if berries are in season try them for a fresh, cool contrast. Warm butterscotch sauce is poured over the top, dripping over the edges and encircling the pancakes in a sweet toffee caramel pool.
The pancake recipe is adapted from Ottolenghi’s Sweet Potato Pancakes, substituting a homemade date paste and adjusting quantities for a flippable pancake batter. That brief inspiration turned out better than expected – a thick, pillowy pancake studded with date chunks that really isn’t too difficult or time-consuming to make. No one in my family could turn them down!
- 200 g dates , chopped
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 1/2 cups flour (200g), sifted
- 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 3 eggs , yolks and whites separated
- 2/3 cup milk
- 40 g butter , melted
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
- icing sugar , to dust
- 65 g butter
- 100 g brown sugar
- 140 ml cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
- salt to taste
- 3-4 beurre bosc pears
- 2 tbsp caster sugar
- 2 tbsp butter , melted
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Preheat the oven to 200°C.
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Halve and core the pears, and quarter them if large. Place in a roasting dish big enough to hold them in a single layer. Combine the melted butter & sugar and pour over the pears. Toss to coat. Roast for 30-40 minutes or until golden and tender. They may need longer if unripe to start with.
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Make the butterscotch sauce: combine the butter, brown sugar, cream and vanilla in a small pot. Cook over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved, the butter has melted and the sauce just starts to thicken. Season with salt to taste. Set aside.
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In a small pot, combine the chopped dates, baking soda and 1/2 cup water. Cook over a medium heat for 5-10 minutes until the dates go mushy and form almost a paste with the water. Stir frequently to ensure it doesn’t catch. Remove from the heat and put in the fridge to cool.
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Mix together the flour, baking powder, dark brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a large bowl.
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In another bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, milk, melted butter and vanilla essence.
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Pour the liquid mixture into the flour mixture and stir to just combine. Fold in the date paste to just combine.
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In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks (but not dry). In two batches, gently fold into the date mixture.
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Heat a large frying pan (or 2, for faster cooking!) over medium heat. Add 1 tbsp butter to grease. When the butter starts to foam, ladle about 1/4 cup of the pancake batter into the pan (cook about 3 at a time depending on the size of your pan). Cook for a couple of minutes on each side until golden brown underneath (they are pretty soft so can be tricky to flip!).
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Transfer to a warm plate while you cook the rest.
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To serve, place a couple of pancakes on each plate and arrange the roast pears on top. Drizzle with warm butterscotch sauce and dust with icing sugar
These are so great, they take the humble pancake into something made for a special occasion! I love that drippy butterscotch sauce and the gorgeous roasted pears to top it all off.
My mum hates baking but I have great childhood memories of her banana cake with chocolate frosting that always turned out exactly the same! and also lolly cake. hehe.
Thanks so much Hannah! Definitely special occasion worthy, but also decadent weekend treat worthy! Your Mum must love having you bake for her now then – and lolly cake was a classic in our house too when I was little! x
I’m in love with these beautiful photos and your story about your mother baking and teaching you to bake. Moms are so so special and yours sounds like a beautiful woman! <3
Thanks Erica!! She is – just spent a lovely weekend with her in Melbourne and so sad to see her go back to Auckland this morning! xx
Sticky date pancakes??! That sounds like the most glorious food invention! And that butterscotch sauce makes me weak at the knees. Pinned!
Thanks so much Jessica <3
Oh man, these are beautiful! Love all the flavors going on here, and butterscotch sauce!?! So good! Pinning!
Thanks Meghan! Butterscotch sauce was a lovely change from maple syrup, and goes so well with the sticky date! x
These look so amazing! I don’t know which photo I want to pin because they all look so beautiful! I’ve been wanting to try a powdered sugar action shot and now I really want to try it. Such a beautiful and tasty way to celebrate Mother’s Day.
Aw thank you so much Megan, I had so much trouble cutting down the photos (which is why there are so many in the post…) – way too hard to choose! Definitely give that action shot a go – just get someone else to shake the icing sugar while you take the photos! xx
Beautiful photographs!! Thanks for sharing with all of us!
Thanks Erin! 🙂
Beautiful pictures. Lovely way to celebrate this special day. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Ratna 🙂
It’s a good thing you live half a world away…. otherwise I would be on your doorstep all the time! 😉 This dish looks so wonderfully decadent and so well balanced in flavor – it’s near the middle of the night here and I’m already wishing it were breakfast!
Hahahah you would be most welcome! I’d be over at yours pretty frequently too. Thanks so much Kathleen!
Those pancakes, those pears, that butterscotch sauce!! Your photos!! Gorgeous Claudia! Putting these on my list! YUM!
Thanks Mary Ann, would love to know what you think if you give them a go!
Claudia, these pancakes are so beautiful! I’m so glad you got to enjoy them with your momma 🙂 although I wish I was there devouring them with you guys, haha! I’m obsessing over that butterscotch sauce, and the roasted pears are gorgeous!
Hi Claudia , these look divine , plan on trying them tomorrow . How do we use berries instead of pears ? By roasting them too ?
I have a feeling pears will go better with butterscotch 😊. Will tell you how it turned out. Much love Xx
Hi Rabiya! Thanks so much! If I was using berries instead of pears, I would probably just serve the berries fresh on top to keep them really light and a contrast to the rich sauce. You could also make a bit of a compote – it does depend on what sort of berries you are using. If you have strawberries, maybe either keep them fresh or roast them like this http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/roasted-strawberries-recipe.html
Would love to know how they turn out for you! xx
Claudia !!!!! Oh My God, the pancakes turned out delicious …just prefect . I must admit the batter is a bit tricky to handle , the step where you need to mix wet ingredients to the flour mixture, I panicked thinking it’s too dry so added a little bit of more milk before dates, after folding in the egg whites,it all came together beautifully…loved the butterscotch sauce & roasted pears!!! So glad I came across your blog …this was the fourth recipe I tried.
Another thing , I want to make no-churn coffee ice cream & bricohe burger buns..please try to come up with your versions of both. Lots of love..Xxx
YAY, so happy to hear that they went so well for you!!
You are in luck with the brioche burger buns as I am putting a recipe for them up today or tomorrow – will keep the coffee ice cream in mind for my next few posts though! x
These are absolutely stunning and sound amazing!!
Thanks Sabrina! 🙂
Amazing recipe, it’s like pancake heaven here with a stunning butterscotch sauce!
Also, your photography is just way too gorgeous, I can’t stop pinning 🙂
Thanks Evi, haha my brothers were definitely in pancake heaven when they tried it!
The photography was definitely a work in progress – I think I got lucky with the lighting and everything just coming together well in this set! 🙂
Moms are so awesome, right? As awesome as these sticky date pancakes! Wowzers! These look incredible! I love that your love for food started as such a young age – it shows through your beautiful creations. Love the whole idea of the date pancakes, especially paired with the roasted pears and butterscotch sauce. So unique and so tasty looking! <3