It’s the first day of Lent tomorrow, which means it’s Shrove Tuesday or Pancake day today.
To be honest, it’s pancake day in our house quite often as the kids love em. It’s a quick and easy snack/breakfast/supper to make, so I can never understand why folks buy ready made pancakes.
For a start it’s a great snack to make with the kids. My granddaughter helped me make the stack pictured above.
I’ve been making pancakes for over 40 years with some reasonable success, so I thought I’d share my hints and tips for making a really good pancake with everyone.
Hints and tips for making great pancakes
- You need a decent non stick omelette frying pan. Making pancakes in a large or non stick frying pan is a recipe for failure. My omelette pan is a really cheap one I bought from Asda many years ago. It’s a tad shabby now, but it still does the job.
- I use olive oil to cook with, but any oil will do.
- Make sure oil in pan in smoking hot before you add pancake mixture, they will be greasy otherwise
- Cook your pancakes on a high heat
- Don’t add too much mixture to pan, I find a soup ladle works well for the correct amount as they don’t cook well otherwise.
Ingredients
- 100g flour. (I use either plain or self raising)
- 1-2 eggs (I just use one usually)
- 300 ml milk
- Oil to cook with
- Topping of choice, i.e maple syrup, strawberry sauce etc.
Method
Add together your flour, eggs, milk and whisk to a very smooth batter, add extra milk or flour as needed to ensure you have a batter that is not to thin/thick. It should spread in the pan when cooking. Leave to stand for a few minutes. Make sure there are no lumps in your batter otherwise you’ll be chewing them
Heat a teaspoon of oil in your frying pan over a high heat until there is a blue haze, then add a ladle of batter. Pancakes cook really quickly so you need to be ready to start turning them over. I use a fish slice at this point to check the underneath to see how it’s doing. If it’s starting to cook nicely, I flip/toss it over to cook on the other side. Give it another toss to make sure both sides are a nice golden brown, then turn onto your plate.
Gradually build your stack and garnish with your preferred choice. Our kids like to mix strawberry, chocolate and maple syrup. It sounds disgusting, but they love it.
Don’t forget you can also add a savoury choice if you don’t want sweet, but who wouldn’t want their pancakes sweet?
