Pancake Party

I'm not a Christian, nor do I follow Lent, but every year I still celebrate Pancake Day, as a day you celebrate by eating pancakes seems like a pretty good thing to jump on the Christian holiday bandwagon for.  This year, Tetley and I had a couple of friends round for drinks and a pancake party.  I must confess, I'm actually really bad at making pancakes, so we set up a mini production line with me making the batter and Tetley cooking and flipping the pancakes.  Tetley is surprisingly adept at this, as seen in my incredible action shot below, and not one pancake ended up on the ceiling or floor!  If you would like to hire Tetley for your pancake-related celebrations, please notify me in the comments below, fees are negotiable. :P

We made two different types of pancake for the party, the first being large, thin crepes and the second small, thick, American-style pancakes.  I got the recipes from Good to Know Recipes, a handy site/magazine.

For the crepe-style pancakes you will need:

• 300ml semi-skimmed milk
• 2 eggs
• 125g plain flour
• 25g butter, plus extra for frying
• Toppings and fillings of your choice

1. Measure out the milk and then whisk the eggs into it.  Put the flour into a bowl and make a little well in the centre, as pictured:

2. Gradually pour in the milk mixture, whisking constantly until the batter is smooth and runny.  Melt the butter and whisk it in to the batter.



3. Heat some butter in a frying pan.  If your frying pan isn't non-stick, aquire a non-stick frying pan from somewhere or this really won't work, as I know from my pancake-making experiences in first year of uni.  When the pan is quite hot, ladle in about this much batter:

4. Gently push around the edges of the pancake with a spatula to prevent it sticking to the pan.  After about two minutes, flip the pancake, or for more cowardly pancake makers (i.e. me) turn it over with a spatula.  Cook for two minutes on the other side, then you're done!

5. Add your fillings or toppings.  These pancakes are not particularly sweet on their own, so any topping works well - ours varied from Tracy's pancake, which she covered in every chocolate item she could get her hands on, to Ruaridh's Super Manly Bacon Pancake, to Malik's healthy halloumi, hummus and salad option, which is the perfect choice if you, like Malik, put vegetables in all your home baking. 

Sadly I was too busy in my pancake production line to take pictures of these amazing culinary feats, I only have a photo of my unimpressive looking but very tasty pancake, containing some squares of white chocolate with raspberry pieces.  I put it in the microwave for a few seconds to melt the chocolate, it was so so good!

For the American-style pancakes, you will need:

• 125g self raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder (or BACKPULVER if you buy from Lidl, I find this inexplicably funny)
• 1 egg
• 125ml semi-skimmed milk
• butter for cooking the pancakes

1. As before, put the flour and baking powder in a bowl and make a well in the centre.  Add the egg to the well, and gradually beat in the milk to make a smooth batter.

2. I wanted to make apple and cinnamon pancakes, so at this stage I peeled and finely chopped two apples and sprinkled on some caster sugar and cinnamon, then cooked the apple pieces in butter for a few minutes.

3. Heat some butter in a non-stick frying pan, and drop the batter into the pan using a tablespoon.  You should be able to make two or three pancakes at once as they are small.

4. Cook the pancakes for three minutes, then turn with a spatula.  Don't try and flip them because with multiple pancakes cooking at once this will turn into a mess, unless you have crazy pancake skills.

5. The pancakes pictured above are plain as Tetley and Tracy didn't want the apple filling.  If you're doing the filling, however, drop a few apple pieces into the pan and then spoon the batter on top of them, and you'll get pancakes with lovely appley, cinnamony centres.  Here's a picture of the apple pancakes:

Here, the pancakes are served with golden syrup and ice cream.  The recipe suggested toffee sauce instead of syrup, which also sounds delicious.  Hope everyone had a great Pancake Day, if you celebrate!