I can’t begin to tell you how much I’ve agonised over posting this tip. I consider this my masterpiece, and it has never failed. You can make these for breakfast or dessert and I guarantee she will love them. Just like my tip on cooking, you can make these for your mother on Mother’s Day as well, or even when you have close friends or family staying over.
These pancakes are deceptively filling, so two will be enough for one person. To make four pancakes, you will need two eggs, a little plain flour (maybe about half a cup), butter, some milk (maybe about a cup), a pinch of sugar, butter, a punnet of strawberries, some castor sugar and some butter.
I know I sounded incompetent, but you really do need to add quite a bit of butter to all this. You can probably tell from my list of ingredients that this isn’t a precise recipe. Most of it is made to taste, so you need to work with it as you go. This will actually make it look like you’re making shit up as you go – which can be a GREAT bonus.
Start by making the pancakes. Break two eggs into a mixing bowl, and use a whisk to beat them quite a bit. You want them to be completely yellow, to the point where they seem to have a little froth on top. Make sure all the white is beaten in.
Then, sprinkle a fine layer of flour over the eggs, and use the whisk to mix it in. It will get a few little lumps in it, but don’t stress. Mix the flour as well as you can, and if you have to, kind of squish the flour lumps against the side of the bowl.
Once the flour is pretty well mixed in, sprinkle on another layer and mix it in again, the same way. There will be less lumps, and they will go away quicker. Add flour twice more, making sure it’s mixed in well each time. After the last time, make sure your mixture is smooth and thick. If it’s still too watery, add flour again and mix it in.
Now add a pinch of sugar. A pinch is made using your thumb and your pointer and middle fingers. Sprinkle in the sugar and mix it in a bit. Then add a small amount of milk. You’ll notice that when you add it, it won’t mix in very well by itself. Using the whisk, gently mix in the milk so that the mixture gets a little more runny.
Add milk again – more than the first time – and mix it in. Do this one or two more times, each time adding a little more milk than the time before. You want the mixture to get back to a consistency almost like water, but not quite as runny.
Then you want to sit that aside for a bit. Turn on the oven (that’s the part with the door where you cook a roast) to about 100°C. Then put a frying pan on the stove, and get the heat going to about a low/medium point – less than 50%.
While all that’s happening, grab out the strawberries. Cut off the green bit and then stand the strawberry up, pointing towards the ceiling. Slice the strawberry three times vertically, rotate it 90° and make the three cuts again. This will cut the strawberry into little sticks. Do this with almost the entire punnet, then put them aside.
By now, your pan should be hot enough. Assuming you have a standard stick of butter (looks like a rectangular building block), slice about 3mm off one end and put it in the pan. It should melt quite quickly, but not sizzle and evaporate the second it hits the pan. If it does, turn the heat down a bit.
Swirl the pan around so the butter covers the base. If there’s not enough in there, just add some more. Once the butter has melted, and maybe goes a bit bubbly, you’re going to add the pancake batter. Put the pan flat on the stove, and pour some batter into the centre. Remember that we know that a liquid always finds it’s own level? Pour in enough batter so that it will spread out and cover the entire base of the pan – but not too thickly.
The thinner they are, the quicker they cook and the less “eggy” they will taste. After a couple of seconds, if the batter hasn’t covered the base, either swirl the pan a little, or add a bit more batter – maybe both. Then leave it until little bubbles start to appear.
Before you try and flip the pancake, don’t do it like they do in the cartoons – or you’ll get a cartoon ending. Get a plastic egg flip and gently slide it under an edge. You want to make sure the pancake will slip around the pan before you flip it. Then, get the egg flip as far under as you can so that the pancake doesn’t tear, and in one fluid motion, turn the pancake over.
Let it cook for a couple of minutes and then lift one side with the egg flip and check that it’s cooked. Once it’s done, transfer it to a clean plate, put the plate in the oven and start again with a new pancake. As each pancake is cooked, just add it to the “stack” in the oven. This will keep them hot until you are ready to put them togather. Once all the pancakes are done, you’re ready to start on the strawberry filling.
Use the same pan you used to cook the pancakes. It saves washing up, and the pan is already hot. Turn the heat up just a tad and once it’s ready, put ALL of the strawberries in the pan. They should sizzle a little bit, which is good, and then let them cook for a few minutes by themselves. The heat will draw out the liquid in the pancake, giving you the beginnings of a great sauce.
After a few minutes, and a decent sized knob of butter. The butter will melt and make the sauce a bit more runny. Keep cooking the strawberries until they get nice and soft, but don’t let them fall apart and form a mess. If they start to dry out, add some more butter to keep the sauce going. When you think the strawberries are just about done, add some castor sugar and gently stir it in. This is where you need to taste as you go and bring the sauce to a nice mix of tart and sweet.
Once they’re done, grab the pancakes out of the oven. Use a mitt, because the plate will be f**king hot.Before you do the next step, take a look at the strawberries in the pan, and think about how you’re going to divide the mixture evenly amongst the pancakes. If you’ve only made four pancakes, you’ll obviously divide the pan into quarters. Picture in your mind how much mixture that is, because once you start the next step, things will start to run together.
Using a big spoon, spoon some strawberries and sauce onto a pancake, just “below” the centre. Then fold the bottom part of the pancake up until it almost completely covers the strawberries. Fold the sides in and gently press down to make the pancake “pocket” the size you want. Then, fold the “top” section down, covering the whole pocket. Then, VERY VERY gently, transfer the pancake onto a clean plate. It will be easier if you can gently slip the egg flip under the pancake to help.
Do this with all the pancakes, but try to leave a little bit of sauce in the pan for the end. Then, just like you see on TV, drizzle some of the sauce over the pancakes.
If you don’t like strawberries, you can substitute raspberries, or even bananas. Bananas don’t have their own liquid, so you would need to add butter before frying them, and you would almost need one whole banana per person. These pancakes are also really nice if you slip some ice magic or other chocolate sauce inside the pancake. And if you make a chocolate heart, like in tip #2, gently place it on top of the pancakes immediately before serving – and then run! The heat of the pancakes will VERY quickly melt the heart.
