Pancake Day holds great memories for me. My dad hardly ever went in the kitchen as we were growing up. To be honest I don't think I thought he could actually cook, but the one thing he always did was cook the pancakes. If he was working or wasn't around for any reason we would postpone Pancake Day. My mum would make the batter to Delia's recipe and then when my dad came home he would cook the pancakes. He'd always cook them in lard (I assume as his mother had and as it has a higher cooking temperature) and would always toss them, making us laugh as he pretended to drop them or get them stuck to the ceiling.
Today I started the day with American style pancakes but a healthy version high in protein and low in sugar. I topped them with grated apple, a squeeze of lemon juice, berries and a spoonful of 0% Total Greek yoghurt. A fab start to the day and a perfect post workout treat.
The recipe can be found here
I then had a light lunch to leave room for a blow out evening of pancakes.
I started with a relatively healthy Bolognese Pancake Stack. I made this by layering up spelt pancakes with Bolognese.
I used the Delia recipe above but replaced the white flour with spelt whole meal flour. It was effectively a lasagne but with pancake rather than pasta layers. For the Bolognese I used half beef mince and half turkey mince as it's a leaner cut and bulked it with plenty of onion and mushrooms to increase the vegetables. I also omitted the béchamel sauce and topped with tomato sauce and a small sprinkling of Parmesan rather than loads of cheese.
The photo's aren't great but give you the idea
For pudding I didn't even attempt to be healthy and went all out.
For these pancakes I used Delia's standard recipe above with white flour as she does and I cooked them in lard as my dad would have done.
The first one I decided to try something inspired by a wonderful breakfast I had in a little cafe opposite the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam. I made this by pouring batter into the pan as normal and pressing rounds of apple into the batter before the first flip.
The apple cooks into the pancake and tastes great. I served it with a sprinkle of cinnamon and a drizzle of agave nectar.
For the second one I kept things simple. It can't be Pancake Day without at least one lemon and sugar pancake. I squeezed a generous amount of lemon on the cooked pancake and sprinkled liberally with granulated sugar. Simple and delicious!
Next up was a Nutella pancake. I make this by cooking the pancake on one side and then flipping. As the second side cooks I put a generous spoonful of Nutella in one corner of the pancake so it could start to melt and then folder the pancake into quarters squashing in the Nutella with the back of my spatula.
Finally, was the Big Bang, based on a banana split sundae I went all out on this pancake. Totally OTT and fabulous!
I cooked the pancake on one side and flipped it. While the other side cooked I added slices of mars bar and allowed them to start to melt from the heat of the pan and added slices of banana.
I then put it on the plate and added whipped cream, chocolate ganache and lots of salted caramel sauce. Wow!
After all of that I now feel rather obscenely full and am kind of understanding why I don't do this more often!
