How To Make Pancakes

We Brits know how to make pancakes, after thousands of years practice we've got the pancake recipe down. We'd go as far as saying it's the best pancake recipe of the lot. Thicker than crepes, delicious with savoury and sweet fillings and easy to roll, the British pancake is a true all rounder. All you'll need is a large bowl (or you can use a food processor if you have one), a large frying pan, a wooden spoon, a ladle and a spatula or "fish slice". And of course your best flipping technique!

Sieve the flour and salt into a large bowl and make a well in the mixture. Break in the egg and stir to make a breadcrumby mix. In a jug add 1/3 of a pint of milk and top up with water to make 1/2 a pint (200ml milk, 100ml water) - this makes a lovely light batter.

Add the milk and the water mix bit by bit, beating constantly to avoid lumps. If you have a food processor just throw all the ingredients in and zap until smooth! Pop a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add a large knob of butter (roughly 50g) and melt.

Pour the excess butter into a small bowl and reserve it for later. Using a ladle pour a spoonful of the pancake batter into the hot pan and swirl to get a full covering - cook for about 1 min each side (it's ready when it's easy to flip over). Serve immediately with sugar and lemon or other exciting toppings. We love cheese and Marmite for an extra British twist!

Our American cousins do a pretty good pancake themselves! Fluffy, thick and sweet, the American pancake is served in a stack and is popular with maple syrup and bacon. It's a sweeter, more filling affair and also tastes great with lashings of honey and fresh fruit. Pancake recipes don't get better than this! Sieve the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar into a bowl. In a jug lightly whisk together the egg and milk when that's combined whisk in the melted butter.

Use a fork to beat the milk mixture into the flour mixture until it's smooth and the lumps have disappeared. Heat a large non-stick frying pan or griddle pan over a medium heat and add a knob of butter. As soon as the butter is melted and beginning to bubble, add a level ladle of batter - add as many as you can fit. The batter should be thick and should easily settle into a puffy cake on the pan's surface without spreading too much. Wait until the top of the pancake begins to bubble, then flip it. As it cooks it will raise about 1cm or so.

The first time I went to a berry farm to pick my own berries, I was floored at how crazy big those juicy red raspberries were. I kid you not - some were half the size of my finger! Needless to say, I go every year to stock up and then store them in my freezer for future use for things like smoothies, cocktails, and desserts.

This recipe started by taking some recipes from my freezer and boiling them in water to extract the juice. The photo above shows 2 cups but I ended up actually using 3 cups of berries. Any foam created in the pot was scraped off and discarded. Once I had a rich juice extracted, I separated the seeds through a fine mesh strainer.

I really pressed it with the spatula because I wanted to extract as much pulp as I could. If you want a perfectly smooth syrup, don’t push too hard. The final result: a tart and perfectly sweetened raspberry syrup. I made plain old multigrain pancakes from a box and filled them with dark chocolate chips for this particular breakfast.

Why must chocolate and raspberry go so well together, As you can see, my lovely 8-year-old daughter (aka food shot assistant) is doing a wonderful job pouring that wonderful syrup. The final result was a luscious dark red syrup that was absolutely perfect in every way. Serve it with some blueberry buttermilk pancakes if you’re going for a red, white, and blue them for 4th of July.

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