Fruit Pancake Syrup

Cooking Pancakes and Blackberry Syrup (yes, really, they're blackberries - they got really red when they started simmering - or maybe it was a reaction to the acid in the lemon juice?)

Serving Pancakes with Blackberry Syrup

Quick and delicious, this warm fruit syrup will relegate your Mrs. Butterworth's to the back of the pantry. With a little practice, you'll be able to do it while you're cooking pancakes and only add a couple minutes to the total time to make a batch. See the recipe for Pancakes.

Ingredients

Serves ? - depends how much you put on one set of pancakes (the pictures on the right are a 1/2 pound fruit batch on a single plate, and it was a bit excessive).

• 1/2 pound fruit
• 1/4 cup cold water
• 1 tsp corn starch
• Some more water
• 1 - 2 Tbsp granulated sweetener (to taste, add more with sour fruit)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp lemon zest (I'm lemon-zester-impaired, I've owned several zesters and have a microplane I love, but I can't make lemon zest - I don't add this)
• 1 tsp - 1 Tbsp lemon juice (to taste)

Directions

1. Put the corn starch in a glass with 1/4 cup cold water and stir it up.
2. Make the fruit into pieces around the size of blueberries or blackberries.
3. Put the fruit in a saucepan and add maybe 1/4" to 1/2" water. Just enough to distribute the heat to the fruit.
4. Bring to a simmer.
5. Once simmering, add everything except the corn starch mix
6. Simmer for 5 minutes
7. Stir the corn starch up again and slowly add it while stirring
8. Simmer until desired thickness