Pancake Tuesday!

Yesterday was Pancake Tuesday (Shrove Tuesday). Shrove Tuesday or as I know it better as Pancake Day, is the day before Ash Wednesday (first day of Lent) whereby the traditional fasting begins. It became known as Pancake Day because people had to use up ingredients they're not allowed to eat during fasting - eggs, sugar, milk, flour are amongst them. As a result lots of batter and pancakes were made and overtime, it became tradition to eat Pancakes on Shrove Tuesday! I'm not religious or anything but we decided it was a perfect excuse to have pancakes.....any excuse is good excuse! 

Basic batter

I wasn't quite sure what sort of pancakes we were going to have so I decided to start with a basic batter. I doubled the quantities here in order to make more different types but my Basic Pancake Recipe makes 8 pancakes.

BASIC PANCAKE BATTER

Ingredients:

2 cups self raising flour

1 tbsp caster sugar

2 cups milk

60mL oil

2 eggs beaten

pinch of salt

Method: Mix it all up until smooth!

So, I started off thinking I wanted something savoury - ahh cheese and chives! I took out 2 ladles of batter and mixed in 2 tbsp of parmesan cheese and half a cup of chopped chives from my garden. It had a cheesy flavour but I wanted more cheese! I ended up having mine with cream cheese and some bacon.

Cheese and chives pancake

So, what next? I tried to made a pancake pizza. I briefly saute halved cherry tomatoes in the pan and set aside. I poured the batter into the pan as per usual but didn't let it quite cook halfway. After about 15 seconds I quickly flipped it (by the way we had a lot of fun trying to flip pancakes without spatulas!). I arranged some sliced Gruyere cheese, cherry tomatoes and shredded bacon pieces on the pancake and waited for the bottom to brown and the cheese to melt. It was divine!

We had some roast chicken so out comes the good old Chicken Mayo topping with oregano.

By this stage we were very satisfied but ready for dessert! First I made a few classic pancakes and it was up to everyone what toppings they wanted. 

Blueberry and maple syrup pancake roll-ups

Classic pancakes with rum and raisin ice cream and brandy cream topped with maple syrup

Next I had the idea of making chocolate pancakes!!! I conveniently had half a bar of cooking chocolate in my pantry and decided to melt it down. I melted 100g of cooking chocolate and added it to 3 ladles of pancake batter. The chocolate ones were so delicious I wish I made more.

Chocolate batter

Chocolate pancake with bananas and Flake

Along the way we also tried to make blueberry pancakes which succeeded in flavour but not in appearance so it didn't make it to the blog. We had good fun making all sorts of pancakes in the kitchen. Hopefully your Pancake Tuesday was just as fun!