This Tuesday was Pancake Day. Held to use up all the delicious treats in the larder before the onset of Lent, pancakes have been eaten in England for at least 600 years, and are common all over the world, but the tradition of eating them on Shrove Tuesday seems to be a British/colonial thing. I find the recipes for pancakes really difficult to deal with - they're such a simple and tasty treat, so I've decided to share my grandmother's recipe and serving suggestions today. Once, as a child, I missed pancake day having been invited to a friend's house. Thinking that it would be just like my Nana's pancake day, but at someone else's house, I accepted, only to have to force down Findus Crispy Pancakes and suffer a little inside. With this recipe, you can avoid this fate.
This recipe does not use measurements. I'm not a chemist, but I'm fairly sure that the amounts needed are based on the capabilities of each ingredient to absorb and react with the others, so I base it simply on how it feels. If you don't add more flour than your eggs can hold, I can't see why this recipe wouldn't work for you.
You'll need
3 eggs
Plain flour
About a pint of milk
vegetable/Sunflower oil
Dried raisins
Sugar
Lemon juice
plus
A mixing bowl
A jug or a ladel
A frying pan
A whisk
A spatchelor/fish slice/egg turner
1. Break the eggs into the bowl.
2. Whisking all the time, add about 2 heaped desert spoons of flour per egg. The mixture should be quite thick, but not completely immovable.
3. Still whisking, slowly add just under a pint of milk, until the mixture seems almost as thin as milk. (If in doubt, leave it on the thicker side, as you can adjust this later.)
4. Preheat your pan and oil. Add more oil than you need, then drain off any excess so the pan has a very thin coating of oil all over. My sister says that the pan should be smoking before you add the first batter, I think that's a little extreme, but it certainly needs to be quite hot. I heat it on the the 5th of the 6 heat settings on my electric hob.
5. Using a ladel, or pouring from a measuring jug, add just enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan. The batter should flow quite easily, so if it's too thick, add some more milk to the mixture. I use about 3/4 of a full ladel for each pancake in a 12 inch pan.
6. When the pancake starts lifting off at the edges, check under the pancake and see how it's doing - the pancake should be golden brown, with darker brown mottling. This should take a couple of minutes. When it's cooked on one side, turn it over. You can toss it, or turn it with a fish-slice like I do. Again, check and see how the pancake is doing after a few minutes. Because it won't have a flat surface on the cooking side once you've turned it, the mottling will be darker in places and less consistently golden brown.
7. Put the cooked pancake on a plate, and sprinkle sugar and raisins all over it, squirt with lemon juice and roll up from one edge.
8. Repeat as necessary. This recipe makes about 12 pancakes. You will need to add (and drain) more oil for every couple of pancakes.
A couple of notes: My grandmother used white sugar, but I use demerara. They are both equally nice. And obviously, you can add whatever toppings/fillings you like - I use raisins and sugar because that's what my Nana used to serve, what you choose is up to you.
The only downside to cooking pancakes is that they require constant cooking, and they are best eaten fresh, so make sure that anyone else that you're cooking for will come in and get their pancakes when they're ready. The chef, unfortunately, eats in the kitchen.
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