Easy Blueberry Pancakes (2024)

How to make the best fluffy blueberry pancakes with fresh or frozen blueberries. This easy recipe makes pancakes that are light, fluffy, and bursting with blueberries. You probably have everything you need in your kitchen right now.

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Related: We love these popular blueberry muffins.

Blueberry Pancake Ingredients

We love pancakes around here and have already shared our favorite fluffy pancakes recipe with you. We love that recipe so much that we adapted it to make what our family considers the best blueberry pancakes — we make them all the time for breakfast. These pancakes are quick to make, and we are willing to bet you’ve got everything you need to make them right now:

• Flour — In our photos, we’ve used all-purpose (plain) flour. For more whole grain, use whole wheat flour. When we use whole wheat, we go for a 50:50 blend of whole wheat to all-purpose, so they stay nice and fluffy (we explain why in our recipe for whole wheat pancakes). For gluten-free pancakes, swap in your favorite gluten-free flour blend or try buckwheat flour (here’s our recipe for buckwheat pancakes).
• Sugar — Since we usually serve pancakes with syrup, we hold back a bit when it comes to how much sugar we add to the batter. These work with granulated sugar, brown sugar, coconut sugar, and even honey. You could even mix in a little bit of mashed banana as we did in these banana pancakes.
• Milk — There are a lot of options for the liquid element of the pancake batter. Since it’s what we have in our fridge, we use reduced fat milk, but you can use non-dairy milk like almond or oat milk if you want.
• Baking soda and lemon juice (or vinegar) — It’s the reaction between baking soda and a little acid like lemon juice or white vinegar that makes these pancakes so light and fluffy. If you only have baking powder in your kitchen, don’t worry, we’ve given directions below for substituting it. You can also use buttermilk as a substitute to the milk and then leave out the acid (lemon juice/vinegar) just like when making buttermilk pancakes.
• Melted butter — To get that melt-in-your-mouth texture, we mix in melted butter to the batter. If you don’t eat butter, you can use melted coconut oil, which does taste amazing with the blueberries.
• Egg — The egg adds structure and helps to make our pancakes light and fluffy. If you do not cook with eggs and want to make vegan blueberry pancakes, you can substitute a flax egg or simply leave it out.
• Vanilla extract and salt — Vanilla extract and salt take the taste to the next level. You can experiment with other extracts, too. I particularly love a tiny splash of almond extract in these blueberry pancakes.

The full recipe with ingredients amounts is below.

How to Make the Best Blueberry Pancakes

You will only need a few minutes to make these pancakes. First, sour some milk by adding lemon juice or vinegar to it. I usually don’t have buttermilk on hand, so this is my cheat to getting the texture of buttermilk pancakes without buttermilk.

Whisk the dry ingredients and then mix in the soured milk, egg, vanilla, and almond extract (optional, but tasty). When you’ve got a batter, fold in your blueberries.

Using Frozen Blueberries in Pancakes

You can use fresh or frozen blueberries to make these pancakes. It’s tricky to find sweet fresh blueberries all year round. Thankfully, this doesn’t prevent us from getting our blueberry pancake fix!

When using fresh blueberries, add the berries directly to the bowl with batter and fold them in. For frozen blueberries, skip that and add the frozen berries directly to the uncooked side of the pancake in the pan. This way, the frozen berries sink into the middle of the pancake and when you flip it, they get hot and juicy.

(If you were to add frozen berries to the batter in the bowl and mix, the batter turns an unusual blue-green color. It tastes great, but by adding the berries directly to the pancake, they look better.)

The Secret to the Best Pancakes

Over-mixing pancake batter is a common mistake — it makes them heavy and flat, not fluffy. To prevent this, mix your dry and wet ingredients separately at first then combine just before cooking. By the way, these tips apply to waffles and muffins, too. We use this same strategy when making our favorite blueberry muffins. When you’re ready to make the pancakes, combine the two mixes — we use a fork or whisk. Stir until you no longer see dry clumps of flour. Then fold in blueberries.

Leftover blueberries? Here’s our Buttery Lemon Blueberry Cake — It’s simple to make and tastes amazing.

Make Ahead and Freezing Tips

Pancakes freeze well, making them perfect for making in advance. While pancakes fresh off the stove taste the best, freezer pancakes will help fix your next pancake craving! Here are our tips for freezing pancakes:

• Freeze the cooked pancakes in a single layer on a baking sheet. We just line them up on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and slide them into the freezer until they are hard. They usually take an hour or so.
• When the pancakes are frozen, place a layer of parchment paper between each pancake to prevent them from sticking to each other.
• Store the pancakes in a freezer-safe container or bag up to two months.
• To reheat frozen pancakes, place them, in one layer, in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven, cover them with some foil, and then bake until they are heated through (about 10 minutes).
• You can also microwave the frozen pancakes, but they will be a little more floppy. Two pancakes should take 20 to 30 seconds to reheat.

For more delicious breakfast recipes, try our Easy Baked French Toast (it can even be made overnight), these Crispy Waffles or our Perfectly Creamy Scrambled Eggs.

Easy Blueberry Pancakes

Makes 4 servings, 2 pancakes each

Nutrition Per Serving Serving Size 2 pancakes / Calories 393 / Total Fat 14.9g / Saturated Fat 8.7g / Cholesterol 84.7mg / Sodium 615.8mg / Total Carbohydrate 52.5g / Dietary Fiber 2.2g / Total Sugars 15.1g / Protein 12g

AUTHOR: Adam and Joanne Gallagher