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Happy Pancake Tuesday!

Strawberry crepe. Photo from sxc.hu

Feck eating healthily today, for today is Pancake Tuesday! I made a vat of pancake batter last night (it’s best if it gets to sit overnight) to bring into work, where we’ll be cooking it up in our office kitchen with savoury fillings for lunch, followed by the highlight – a classically delicious plain pancake with a sprinkling of caster sugar and a squeeze of lemon.

I follow the directions for pancakes in Nigella Lawson’s ‘How to Eat’ every time and they’ve never failed me.

Basic Pancake Batter

Ingredients

  • 125g plain flour
  • 1 egg
  • 300ml milk
  • Pinch salt

Directions

  1. Make a hill of flour in a mixing bowl and make a depression in the top. Throw in the pinch of salt and then crack the egg into the dent.
  2. Beat the egg and flour together with a wooden spoon, gradually adding in the milk. Once it’s liquid, you can switch to beating with a metal whisk (or a handheld blender).
  3. Beat until all the lumps are gone and the batter has the runny consistency of single cream. You can add a small amount more milk or water if necessary.
  4. Leave the batter to stand, preferably overnight.

Nigella says the best way to cook the batter is to use a hot but not over-oiled pan.  You can achieve this by heating a tablespoon of oil in the pan and once the pan is coated, tipping the oil down the sink.  Pour in a small amount of batter and tilt the pan around until it’s coated.  Cook until you see bubbles in the pancake, then flip.

Fillings? There are so many fillings!  What are your favourites?

Check out some of other pancake recipes from this site:

5 Comments

  1. Oh don’t tip the oil down the sink! You wouldn’t if you had a septic tank. (Don’t get me started…..) Pour it on to a wodge of newspaper and put it in your bin.

  2. Add some sauteed vegetables (e.g. pepper and mushroom) to a thick tomato sauce. Stack the plain pancakes with the vegetable sauce in between. Top with grated cheese and put it in the oven to melt the cheese. Cut into wedges to serve.

  3. Tonight we’re having spaghetti bolognese in pancakes with cheese on top followed by drop scones (thicker version with baking powder) with fruit and greek yogurt on one and lemon and sugar on the other! Yummy!

  4. One tip for the pan: my mum always attached a piece of kitchen paper to a wooden spoon, which she dipped in oil and used to grease the pan lighly between each pancake.
    I use 2 medium eggs for the same proportions of milk and flour. I’d love some “galettes” made with buckweat flour and water and sea salt but the flour is hard to come by (I know some health stores sell it). My favourite fillings:
    smoked salmon, sour cream and rocket
    egg, sauteed mushrooms and cheese (mozzarella or gruyere, yum yum)
    blue cheese, sauteed leeks and walnuts
    roasted red peppers, red onions and goat cheese
    I don’t really eat sweet pancakes, but in our house the favourite are: lemon and sugar, stewed apple and cinamonn, chocolate and banana.

  5. I followed your recipe, and the first batch of pancakes went into the bin: they were stiff and tasted like carboard. For the 2nd batch, I added an egg, 50ml milk (so a total of 350ml) and a big blob of melted butter. They were very fluffy and tasted great. And with the addition of melted butter, I didn’t even have to oil the pan every time