Preparing the perfect pancake

With Pancake Day coming up tomorrow, there’s not much time left to perfect your pancake recipes and decide what you’re giving up for lent.

Historically, Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday) signified a day of feasting before Lent – the 40 day of fasting before Easter. Whereas now, we mostly celebrate Shrove Tuesday by feasting on pancakes and then attempting to give up our favourite food for 40 days (which for me, never lasts!)

To help you out when you try and attempt to make your pancakes, here is a super simple, inexpensive, vegan friendly recipe!

This should make around 5 small pancakes!

Ingredients:

• 150g plain flour
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
• 300ml water
• 1 tablespoon oil (it doesn’t matter which kind – whatever you have!)

Method:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, baking powder, cinnamon) into a large and then mix the rest of the ingredients into a separate bowl. Pour the water and oil mixture into the dry mixture. Stir until the ingredients are well mixed – it might be a little lumpy but that’s okay!
2. Heat a lightly oiled frying pan. Pour a small amount of batter into the pan, cook until bubbles form and then flip! (As I discovered, after a long period of trial and error, the best way to flip the pancakes is to get a spatula the size of the whole pancake and use it to help you!)
3. Repeat with the rest of the mixture.

Topping tip: Grab some bananas, mash them, add soya (or cows) milk and mix until a nice thick consistency. Freeze this mixture and then you have some quick and cheap ice cream to go with your pancakes!

If you’d prefer to make pancakes in a more traditional way, the recipe is virtually the same and the method is exactly the same – adding the milk and egg to the water and oil mixture before mixing with the flour, sugar and baking powder.

Ingredients:

• 130g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
• 130ml milk
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoon olive oil

Happy Pancake Day!