Kelly’s pancakes

Serves 4

Preparation time: 5 minutes  
Cooking time:
10 minutes

This recipe is really for English pancakes, similar to crepes, (only without the butter) but a little thicker. You might think that this recipe a tad slap dash/thrown together - which might drive some people crazy - but the wonderful truth is that this pancake mix is very forgiving and that it will work well despite the slap dash approach. So, don't worry too much, give them a go. My only cautionary word on this is pancake folklore dictates that the first pancake just does not always work and needs to be thrown away, if this happens to you, know it happens to most of us and carry on, your second pancake will work like a dream.

Ingredients
5 very heaped spoons of plain flour (I just use my large cutlery spoon) 
1 egg 
300ml - 500ml milk  
Oil - not olive but a flavourless oil such sunflower, vegetable, groundnut etc 

Method

I usually serve these pancakes one at a time as they come out of the pan but if you want to eat all together then preheat your oven to 180c, and turn it off just before the first pancake goes in. To keep warm, put each pancake onto a sheet of greaseproof paper and on to a baking tray. Keep warm in the oven while you finish making all of the pancakes.

In a jug put your flour and the egg on top of the flour. Add abut 100ml of milk and stir. The mixture will be very very thick but the idea here is to get the mixture going and it is easier to remove lumps with less liquid.  Take your balloon whisk and vigorously whisk, the best way is to go around the edge of your jug very fast as this usually removes all lumps.  Don't worry too much if it does not though, they will work out. 

Add another 50ml of milk and mix again, start slowly as it tends to slosh everywhere if you mix too fast.  Continue to add milk and vigorously whisk until the consistency resembles double cream. The amount of milk you use really will depend on the amount of flour you added so just add a little at a time until your mixture is the right thickness.  This will be anywhere between 300ml and 500ml. 

Take a frying pan and put roughly a tbsp of oil in it, turn on the heat to medium high (on my induction I put the heat to 7).  The oil will get hot and start to almost shimmer, very very carefully swirl the oil around the pan a couple of times then pour just under a ladleful of batter into the middle of the pan.  This will start to set so you need to gently tilt and turn the pan so that the whole of the bottom is coated with batter with no gaps and there are no thick areas. 

The bottom of the pancake will take a few minutes to cook and go golden. Once you can see it starting to colour, take your fish slice and carefully go around the inside edge of the pancake until you can slide the pancake and it is not stuck at all, check it is golden and then turn over.  Be very careful once you turn it, the bottom will take maybe only 30 seconds. 

Serve straight out of the pan with whatever topping you pick, my personal favourite is either cinnamon and sugar or lemon and sugar, but other favourites in our house is Nutella, maple syrup, golden syrup etc etc etc. 

To repeat, take kitchen roll and carefully make sure there is no stray bits of cooked batter, add a tbsp of oil and repeat. The amazing smell have my hoards come running long before the first one is out of the pan.