Tomorrow is one of my favourite days of the year, and I only realised yesterday, that’s the trouble with Easter falling at a different time each year! Although I eat pancakes all year round – they’re my favourite cinema trip treat as there’s a crepe café at my local cinema – pancake day is a tradition I will never tire of.
I prefer thin pancakes, i.e. crepes. I find big thick American-style pancakes are better for Saturday breakfasts, and don’t seem like such a treat. Crepes remind me of the pancake days of my childhood, as well as eating huge crepes with lemon and sugar in Cannes, and plate-sized crepes piled high with toppings in The Netherlands.
I’ll always be a lemon and sugar kind of girl, although I have been known to use orange on occasion, however it’s only in recent years that I’ve started to branch out into other toppings. a few years ago I thought savoury pancakes were sacrilege, now one of my favourites from the cinema café contains sunblush tomatoes, pesto and goats cheese.
For pancake day though, we have a foolproof formula for the most delicious pancakes ever (as long as you’re a meat-eater anyway). Place a few slices of thin-sliced pancetta in a heated, non-stick pan, and allow it to cook on that side until almost done. Pour the pancake mixture into the pan on top of the pancetta, so that when you turn the pancake, the meat’s properly cooked on that side and it can then crisp up on the other side. The bacon also provides just enough fat for the pancakes to cook nicely without having to add any extra oil. Drizzle with maple syrup and enjoy!
How do you like your pancakes?
Crepe-y all the way!