Aquarionics

Pancake Day

Today, I did this:

I made pancakes.

I used to be terrible at pancakes – Ben always made them – but this is how you make pancakes:

Fail. Lots.

You need a decent sized frying pan – non-stick – a ladle and some batter. The batter is made out of some flour, a few splashes of milk, some eggs, optionally cinnamon, vanilla extract and sugar. The amounts of these vary from person to person, but I usually start with about 300g flour, a few eggs, and add milk and whisk until it’s fairly thin (liquid rather than sludge).

Heat your frying pan lots. Add a very small amount of oil. Ladle some batter into the middle of the frying-pan and marble-madness the pan until it stops spreading easily (this should, ideally, be almost exactly as it reaches the edges of the pan, if not, adjust amount in ladle or your expectations). Allow to cook for a little while as the shiny un-cooked batter parts turn into duller cooked batter parts as far as they are going to, and then flip.

To flip a pancake, either:

1. Remove the pan from the heat. Make a rapid movement down with the pan, whilst pushing it slightly away from you, so that the pancake has a “spin” on it as it exits the pan. Then catch it in the middle of the frying pan, not the edge. Or…
2. Get someone else to do (I) Or…
3. Use the slice. You coward.

Retrieve the pancake from the floor/ceiling/wall/cat, and/or leave it in the pan for a half a minute to a minute to brown on the other side. Place on a plate underneath another plate to keep them warm. This doesn’t work terribly well, so eat them soon.

Terrible hardship.

Always, and this is important, remember three important lessons:

1. The cook who doesn’t reserve some pancakes doesn’t get any pancakes
2. The first three pancakes you make on any day will be useless.
3. If a teflon pan catches fire, it’s not non-stick anymore. In fact, it is a Stick pan.

These lessons have been hard earned, learn from my failures.