Mmmm pancakes with blueberry syrup! This syrup is easy to make at home and much better than the beloved syrups served at Cracker Barrel or IHOP! It has more flavor, less sugar and no high-fructose corn syrup! This is the stuff heavenly Saturday mornings are made of.
A few weeks ago I was doing some yummy recipe research at Cracker Barrel. (The entire family loves it when I do this kind of research.) My project of the day was trying blueberry pancakes which came with a cute jar of Dickinsons Wild Main Blueberry Syrup.
The syrup was really nice but heavy on the sugar and lite on the blueberry flavor. Of course the label reveals three kinds of sugar after blueberries – two of which are sugars food can generally do without in my not so humble opinion.
My mission when we arrived at the restaurant was pancakes but I went home thinking I could make a better syrup too! Well it turns out I was right! Blueberry syrup is easy to make at home either with whole berries or smooth. The results are way better than what I got at the restaurant and my syrup actually had a lot of fruit in it. It is still a sweet syrup but not so sweet as to loose the wonderful blueberry flavor.
I will note that most people won’t be able to find Wild Main Blueberries easily and if you can the price point is usually steep. Many stores do carry “wild blueberries” in the frozen section which will give you the great wild berry flavor Main berries are prized for without the cost of the true Main version. Of course you can also use regular cultivated blueberries and still have wonderful syrup – the choice is entirely up to you!
Have a great week. Thanks for stopping by to cook with me!
Tools In This Post: I like this syrup with a few berries in it for texture. If you want a smoother syrup you can use an immersion blender like this at the end. These are also handy tools for jam, soups and sauces.
Need a great pancake recipe to go with your syrup? These Copycat Cracker Barrel Pancakes are about my most popular recipe ever and one we make for breakfast most weeks.
Copycat Cracker Barrel Blueberry Syrup
Ingredients
- 2 cups blueberries see note
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup water
- 1 Tbsp. cornstarch
Instructions
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Combine the cornstarch and 2 Tbsp. of the water in a small bowl and set aside.
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Add the rest of the water to a medium saucepan with the blueberries and sugar. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat stirring occasionally.
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Reduce heat to bring the syrup down to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes.
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Stir the cornstarch mixture in making sure to stir until everything is well mixed. Continue to stir occasionally and simmer until the sauce thickens a little bit. A few of the berries will be whole still which gives this syrup a fun texture. You can always choose to puree the remaining berries with an immersion blender or a drink blender.
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Store in the refrigerator for several weeks or in the freezer for several months.
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Serve cold or warm however you prefer.
Recipe Notes
Type of Blueberries: You can use any kind of blueberries to make this syrup. They can be fresh or frozen. Some people prefer using wild blueberries because they have a slightly more intense and tangy taste than cultivated blueberries. I like using wild blueberries for syrup because they are small and you get nice thick syrup with little blueberries in it. That being said, the cost of frozen wild blueberries is generally about twice as much as frozen cultivated blueberries.
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