These little American Pancakes form week 6 of my new year’s resolution for 2013 to cook at least one new thing every week, for the year. Perfect for Pancake Day. Yummy!
To help me on my way with this challenge throughout the year, I shall be doing a monthly cook with Nigella Lawson from her lovely How To Be a Domestic Goddess book.
I am pretending that the Goddess herself is here with me in the kitchen; guiding me, ignoring the mess I’ve made and the flour I’ve somehow got on the cat and laughing whole heartedly at all of my jokes. I shall be trying to ooze glamour and an ease and comfort within the kitchen. As the gorgeous Nigella herself says… “What I’m talking about is not being a domestic goddess exactly, but feeling like one.”
How To Be a Domestic Goddess February – American Pancakes
American Pancakes Ingredients
(Makes 15)
- 225 plain flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- pinch salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- 30g butter, melted
- 300ml milk
- butter for frying
How To Make American Style Pancakes
- Put all of the ingredients, except the butter for frying, into a blender and blitz to a smooth batter.(How easy is that!)
- Leave the batter for 20 minutes before using it. (Time for a cup of tea and game of snap with the smalls.)
- Heat a little of the butter for frying in a frying pan and pour in small dollops of batter.
- When the upper side of each little pancake is blistering and bubbling it’s time to flip it over and cook the second side for a minute or less.
I admit that I have attempted to make small thick American style pancakes before, but never successfully and never by following a recipe. My pancake making method up to now has been a very simple throw some flour and an egg into a bowl and add milk until the required thickness is achieved. The results? Palatable – yeah. Leaving you yearning for more – most definitely not!
These little beauties however have changed my pancake world. I vow from now on to take the time to weigh my pancake ingredients out properly. These are so deliciously light and fluffy that I feel a little bad for subjecting my family to such second rate versions for all these years. Now Nigella does mention using a blini pan in her recipe but I’m afraid I wouldn’t recognize a blini pan if it jumped up and bit me on the nose. So I shall carry on using my trusty frying pan and believe the uneven shapes achieved offer a certain ‘rustic kitchen’ charm!
Thanks Nigella, you’ve changed my pancake world.
American Pancakes taken from How To Be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson, published by Chatto & Windus. Used by permission of The Random House Group Limited