Pancakes for dinner is legit, right?
In all honesty, I have never had pancakes for dinner before now. It was something Mum never allowed.
And since we are all about honesty right now, I have another confession. My brother is the pancake maker in our family. I am merely his assistant. He has made more batches of pancakes than I have made cookies in my life. He makes them for himself, for the boys as well as when he invites girls over for brunch in order to impress them.
So as a result of all this practice, he is flipping amazing at making these. But alas! He's in Auckland so I had to make them myself.
Pancakes are a legit date-night food, too, right? Because it was a special occasion (I was trying to win some brownie points with the man friend), I made up a raspberry coulis and invested in some real maple syrup, which I might add is so worth the $12 or so for the 250ml bottle.
Ok, so pancakes are not a complete food source. They are kind of lacking in some vital nutrients. Unless you serve them with bacon and there are berries in there somewhere . . .
What pancakes do offer to compensate for the refined carbohydrate nightmare are flat-moral-boosting and nolstalgia-inducing qualities. They are also darn cheap to make (provided you stick to the cheap syrup!).
There is one golden rule to pancake making: DO NOT OVERMIX. Full stop. Sift together the dry ingredients, then whisk all the wet ingredients in a separate jug.
Pour the wet into the dry and stir with a spoon 10 times. Then drop the spoon and walk away. Just walk. Yes there will be lumps. Yes there may be pockets of flour. But the last thing you want is to overwork the gluten in the flour and create an awful chewy dense mess!
Here's another tip: get your pan nice and hot before you place the first lot in. This will help prevent sticking. Also try not to overcrowd the pan. This will make flipping difficult and will reduce the pan temperature. Because the baking powder goes into action as soon as you mix it in with the wet ingredients, you need to cook them as soon as you whip up the batter or else they will lose their fluffiness potential.
To make a raspberry coulis, gently simmer 2 cups of frozen berries with the juice of one lemon and about a third of a cup of sugar for a few minutes.
I got this recipe off my Auntie Rachel when I was little, which is why they are called Rachel's Yankee pancakes.
Rachel's Yankee pancakes
Serves 3 (makes around 12 small pancakes)
1½ cups plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
5 Tbsp sugar
1 egg
1¼ cups warm milk
30g butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. In a heatproof jug, warm the milk in the microwave. Whisk in the egg, vanilla and melted butter.
Pour the milk mixture over the top of the dry mix. Stir 10 times. It's okay if there are lumps. They will be sorted out in the pan.
Spoon ¼-cup volumes of batter onto a hot pan on medium/high heat which has been lightly greased with butter. Once the bottom surface is golden and it looks like the bottom section of the pancake has started to set, flip it over and cook the top side. The timing will depend on your pan so be prepared to write the first batch off as a test run. Turn down the heat a little if they aren't cooking all the way through before they brown.
Serve with maple syrup, lemon and sugar or berry coulis. Enjoy!
