Woohoo! PANCAKES Ahoy!!

When I say I’m a pancake monster, fortunately I don’t mean this…..

….but how cool is that?! I’ll put up my hand and confess now…. we’ve never, ever, ever had fun making pancakes as a family before. I’ve always been soooo nervous about the whole flippin’ flipping thing that we’ve always had normal, everyday, singed around the edges pancakes …. until NOW!!!!  This year we decided to go for it in a big and FUN way! I’m not saying we didn’t have “ordinary” pancakes too. Our favourite normal pancakes this year were leek and goats cheese for a lovely lush and tasty savoury version and Choccie Philly (yes, we’re silly!) with mandarin oranges and ice cream (messy but LUSH) for sweet. Then things got a little crazy…..

My daughter’s just starting to enjoy cooking and we had lots of lovely left overs from cake pop making the other day, so we got decorating…and then found food dye, and madness just ensued! We used the standard recipe:-

• 110g plain flour
• Pinch of salt
• 2 eggs
• 200ml milk with 75ml water
• 2tbsp butter

We sifted together the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl (we did our best Mary Berry and held the sieve high (messy!) so that the flour was well aired (and very attractive it looked all over the cooker hob too!). Having made a well in the middle of the flour, we added the eggs then whisked. To this we added the milk and water mixture a little at a time – good job because we did have a little left over that we didn’t need (probably because of the hob top flour!). Now….what we did next, the first time around, was wrong – we added the butter without melting it first and ended up with little chunks floating in the mixture rather than ending up with the smoothness as we should have had. So, our TOP TIP is to make sure you do melt the butter! Once the pan was nice and hot we added the mixture a little at a time…

Hooooowwww cute?!

First off my daughter had a go at making a baby owl – relatively simple on the shaping of the pancake for this. We were going to add the wings into the pancake shape but then she had the idea of doing them in chocolate buttons and there was no dissuading her, naturally!

Crispy Duck Pancake (d’y’geddit?!)

We then thought back to the fun meal we had at Chinese New Year and decided on a tongue in cheek….Crispy Duck Pancake pancake!  We had fun with left over squirty cream and food dye for the water, left over mandarin orange segments for the beak and wings and butterfly sprinkles in the sky. We had a good high five to celebrate our cheesiness at this one!

(blue insides!)

Then the now infamous Rainbow Fish! Who knew that blue food dye in pancake mixture would be so…..ummm….vivid?! Smarties, jelly tots, mandarin orange and banana all came in handy for this one! My daughter absolutely loved her creation. It’s a good job that the photos came out okay first time around because by the time I’d come back from checking them on the computer, Rainbow Fish was no more! I did do a quick “oh dear, her insides are now that colour!” but what the heck, it’s just once a year!

So, while she was finishing licking the plate after Rainbow Fish she happened to say “aren’t pancakes far more fun than ordinary cakes?”, which gave me an idea for the last little bit of mixture. So, here’s my pancake cupcake – as you can see, I was more impressed with myself than my teenage daughter, but that is going to be a great photo to show boyfriends in years to come – Kevin the teenager eat your heart out!!

Oh go on kid, give me a smile, pleeeease!!!