One thing I look forward to on all trips to the Northern Rockies is huckleberry ice cream. I first discovered this delicacy in Yellowstone. Ever since that first taste, my trips to Yellowstone National Park usually feature as much huckleberry ice cream as I can reasonably consume. Hint: It is a lot!!! Anyway, on our trip to Glacier National Park this past summer, a debate was ongoing even before we left. We were trying to decide if joining the masses pursuing huckleberry ice cream was smart in this age of COVID. The funny thing is, we never completely answered that question, but we did generally steer clear of people. Getting exceptionally sick on a big vacation we had been planning for years just didn't sound fun. We were willing to forego some of our usual trip activities, such as eating out, in exchange for a healthy trip. But what about those huckleberries?
As our trip drew nearer and nearer, we were still trying to figure out how to get in on that huckleberry goodness when inspiration struck. My wife and I greatly enjoy pancakes and specifically blueberry pancakes. What if we premixed some pancakes so that we only needed to add liquid ingredients and hopefully some huckleberries to try a new variation on one of our favorite delicacies? So, the night before our trip, I quickly mixed up threw separate batches of pancake mix. We have developed a small variation on the recipe in one of our cookbooks to make these pancakes healthier and also vegan. Not that we always skip the eggs in general, but in a lot of our baking we prefer things that way. So, here is the recipe I use for both blueberry and huckleberry pancakes. And no, I'm not fancy enough to even began to know about the nutrition information so don't bother to ask. I just know these things are delicious!
Vegan Huckleberry Pancakes Recipe
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons of sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons Ener-G Egg Replacer
1 tablespoon ground flax seed
1 1/2 cups unsweet almond milk + a little more to reach desired consistency
3 tablespoons of cooking oil
Fresh huckleberries stirred into batter (as many as you want!!!)
After mixing each batch of dry ingredients, I placed them in a quart ziplock bag. We would add the almond milk and oil when we mixed them to cook.
Huckleberry Pancakes in Glacier National Park
Once we got our trip started, I more or less forgot about the huckleberry pancakes, until we moved to
Glacier Campground that is. During our first couple of days in Glacier staying at Fish Creek, we casually looked for huckleberries on one of our drives but kept striking out. Our luck changed when we moved to Glacier Campground. There were numerous huckleberry bushes throughout the woods beside and behind our campsite. We were very fortunate with our campsite location as this wouldn't have been possible with many of the campsites that were in the middle of the campground. Our campsite was on the edge of the campground with lots of woods behind and to one side, however.
As we were getting close to finishing our epic 20+ mile
hike to Sperry Glacier, we began to think seriously about food and also the next day. Neither of us knew how we would feel the next morning. There was at least a chance we would barely be able to move. So, we did something that we hadn't done during our whole time at Glacier: we decided to sleep in. The funny thing is that we were so used to waking up that we were still up at a ridiculously early hour. Part of that could have been excitement. We were going to finally try huckleberry pancakes!
A quick trip through the woods by our campsite produced more huckleberries than we needed. We probably went a little overboard on the huckleberries as we often do on the blueberries when we make those pancakes. I'm a firm believer that more is better, at least when it comes to fruit filled pancakes. We washed the huckleberries and then stirred them into the batter. It was hard to tell if there was more batter or more huckleberries. In other words, these were going to be epic huckleberry pancakes.
I fired up my camp stove and got to work cooking the pancakes. We were ravenous after the previous day's big hike and those pancakes sure hit the spot. Cooking them seemed like an eternity, but eventually they were done and we were ready to dig in.
We finally sat down to a big pile of hot huckleberry pancakes and soon devoured every last one. I mostly did peanut butter and honey on mine while my wife stuck with just the honey. Maple syrup would have been good as well, but of course that would be just another thing to keep in the cooler. I am probably strange in that I usually do peanut butter (natural) and raw honey on my pancakes almost exclusively although my wife probably missed her usual maple syrup. Still, they were absolutely perfect. These were by far the best huckleberry pancakes I've ever had (okay, they were the only ones I've ever had) and in fact the best pancakes in general I've ever had. I think I have a new favorite for those trips out west. I'll still look forward to my huckleberry ice cream, but now I'll look forward to huckleberry pancakes at least as much and probably even more!
