Pancakes

I have decided that Pancake Day is the best 'holiday' of the year. There's no big build up, no expectations, no stress of present buying and no day off work. Not even lots of planning necessary for the food. A simple flour, egg, milk mix is more than enough. Then when they come along, the pancakes, they always exceed expectations. Even if you end up sticking them to the ceiling it's still good simple fun.

I have tried to do something slightly different with them the last few years. I make my spinach pancakes with cheese sauce a good few times over the winter. Last year I think I tried some kind of Quorn fillet with cheese and spinach wrapped in pancakes. This year I saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's sweet potato pancakes and decided to give them a try.

I first whipped up a classic batter this morning before I went to work. I use the best recipe I know which is from the Winnie-the-Pooh cook book that I bought my Mum one Easter (I think) when I was about 8 years old. 4oz flour, 1/2 pint milk and one egg. I doubled it and put it in the milk carton to transport it to work along with some oil, a frying pan, wooden spatula, lemons and Nutella.

Pannier Pancake Kit!

I set up my kit on the conference room table and my boss brought in his gas stove. My work day was nicely interrupted by requests for pancakes. Great way to spend the day!

The Pancake Batter was labelled so that no one accidentally put it in their morning cuppa!

Pancake day continued after my run with the sweet potato pancakes as designed by Hugh but with one minor change. I really don't like ground ginger, I think it has a horrible flavour so I added some mixed spice instead. The result was some very light fluffy Welsh cake type things that didn't really taste of very much but that were delicious with whatever you put on them! I guess that is the point of batter, it's a really good base for everything. 

I then moved onto the normal pancakes. I am a great lover of the traditional lemon juice and sugar but having tried a crepe with Nutella in France during my recent snowboarding trip I have to say I was converted. It helped that Nutella was on special offer in the supermarket when we last went. 

Of course I ate far too many pancakes of all types! Everyone always has pancakes on pancake day, says how great they are and that they should be eaten more than once a year but then we don't eat them again in the same way until the following year!