Anniversary Waffles (or not)

It was mine and Mr VST's first wedding anniversary on Sunday, I can't believe it's been a year since the happiest day of my life already! For our honeymoon we went to Iceland and were lucky enough to stay at Hotel Ranga for four nights. I love that place. It is fantastic in every way, the food there was the best I've ever had. For breakfast each morning they laid on an amazing buffet with cereal, Icelandic yoghurt, fresh pastries, bread and a wonderful selection of fruit. One of our favourite items as part of the buffet was the fresh waffles. There was a big bowl of batter next to the waffle machine and you made your own waffles. Our favourite waffle toppings were lashings of honey and nuts. To celebrate our anniversary Mr VST surprised me on Friday evening with the purchase of our very own waffle maker so that we can start our anniversary holiday with a tasty reminder of our honeymoon.

Mr VST slept in on Saturday morning, which was a blessing as I had to ice our surprise wedding/anniversary cake but not so great as we were supposed to be having pre-anniversary waffles together and as it happened we didn't have time before I went to the hairdressers. 

When I returned from the hairdressers Mr VST had set the table and surprised me with a bunch of mango calla lillies (which were the main flower in my wedding bouquet). He is such a romantic!

We set about making the batter and setting up the waffle maker. The batter recipe was one Mr VST had found on the BBC Good Food website. It was really easy to make and he fired up the waffle maker.

The instructions said that the first time you heat it up you need to grease the plates and that it would smoke. We followed the instructions but after the plastic panel smoked quite a lot and became too hot to touch I switched the machine off for fear that it would ignite. 

We checked through all the instructions again and tentatively switched the waffle maker back on, nothing happened. Nothing at all. No lights, no smoke, no heat. We had killed it. 

Waffle batter is very similar to pancake batter so I decided to make some American pancakes with the batter instead. I also thought I'd try and make 'waffles' using my crumpet rings in a pan. These took ages to cook though and weren't great. They were like a cross between a waffle, pancake and crumpet!

The pancakes themselves were good and we filled ourselves up on pancakes with bananas and maple syrup. 

The waffle reunion will have to wait I'm afraid and the waffle machine is wrapped and ready to return. 

P.S. I hadn't made waffles before and so I've been doing some research. I didn't realise that there were quite so many types of waffles!

American Pancakes with Maple Syrup and Bananas

Mr VST made an unusually good request last bank holiday Monday, pancakes to go with the maple syrup we bought. I asked whether he wanted English or American. He said that he wanted pancakes like my Aunty had made us when we stayed with them shortly after they had returned from Canada. I worked out that he wanted American pancakes and googled for recipes. I came up with this one from BBC Food.

I set about mixing the batter, all very simple, I do love the simplicity of pancakes.

They fluffed up lovely but I think I might have made them a bit too big as I only managed to get four pancakes out of the batter.

We did, of course, have them with maple syrup and bananas.

They were eaten pretty quickly......

 

Sweet Potato Pancakes

I had some left over sweet potato so made these lovely sweet potato pancakes as a pre-dinner snack which were delicious with some local honey. Unfortunately they only made me more hungry!

Sweet Potato Pancakes with Strawberries and Honey

After my disaster with the vegan blueberry chocolate cake I thought I'd return to something tried and tested. I made these lovely sweet potato pancakes again this evening. This was a pancake day recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and it's a good one. These were lovely served with honey and strawberries.

Sweet Potato Pancakes

I made these for pancake day and they were delicious. I fancied making them again and as the veggie stall gods had it sweet potatoes were on special offer this week. I used some of them yesterday in my spinach and sweet potato dahl and had just the right amount left to make these pancakes. I exchanged the melted butter for 100ml of semi-skimmed milk to bring the calorie count down a bit. They worked pretty well and were delicious with a bit of honey on them.

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!

Spinach and Sweetcorn Pancakes with Cheese Sauce

My cheese sauce for the Cauliflower and Broccoli Cheese on Monday was made with Oat milk. Mr VST made a disparaging comment about the appearance of the sauce although nothing bad about the taste. Anyway this was enough for me to pick up some goat's milk on the way home to make the cheese sauce for the pancakes. I also used it for the pancakes although I think I'll be using good old cow's milk for pancake day next week. I served my lovely pancakes covered in cheese sauce with jacket potatoes.

Spinach and sweetcorn pancakes with cheese sauce

We are home this weekend so I have had the luxury of spending as much time as I like in the kitchen. Having embarked on a mission to remind myself how to be healthy I did some Wii yoga this morning followed by a 30 minute run which meant that I had enough calories left to enjoy this classic 80s recipe. It's one my Mum used to make us as kids so that we would eat something green!

It's not very complicated but takes a bit of time as you have to make cheese sauce, pancakes and the filling almost all at once.

You make the pancakes and cheese sauce and wilt the spinach with garlic cloves and sweetcorn and then fill each of the pancakes with some of the spinach mixture, roll them all up and cover them with the cheese sauce. I serve mine with a baked potato. It makes great, filling, Winter comfort food.