We love pancakes in this house, ESPECIALLY if we remember to open the windows before DH gets to work on the griddle. Scottish pancakes have more in common with American ones than French crepes; fat, thick little things that are perfect for little babies to get their carbohydrate fix on. I’ve never been completely clear as to what the English call them… used to be drop scones, now everyone probably follows the Yanks on this.
Here’s the recipe, as per my auld grannie mother’s instructions… i have NO IDEA about conversions I’m afraid.
4oz Self Raising Flour
Pinch of salt
2oz Caster Sugar
1 Egg (I don’t bother about the size, I bet my Grandma used medium but they are fine with a large. Just don’t stress over much if the kids lose some down the side of the bowl if it’s a large, the recipe can handle less egg).
4 tablespoons-ish of milk
I do this in a food processor/mixer/whatnot but it’s really just a batter so a whisk will be fine, if tiring.
Mix dry ingredients a bit, then egg and then the milk, gradually. Ta-Dah!
Honest, that’s it. It’ll be a nice drippy, dropping batter. At this point, the women in my family leave it for an hour. All of them apart from me, who never has time. But I am told it improves the batter, so do it if you can.
If you have a flat griddle or frying pan, get it out and grease it a bit. Nowadays people seem to use veg oil or whatever but I actually still save up my old butter wrappers and rub them on the surface. A teensy bit of oil, like, MINISCULE rubbed in as well will stop the milk in the butter from burning too much.
Slap on heat, wait until it’s preeetty hot, almost smoking, then test a drop of batter in the middle. You want bubbles appearing on the top fairly quickly, that’s when you know it’s at the right temp. Plus, you’ll see how brown it is on the bottom, some like golden, some like darker. My DH likes burned.
Discard tester into the mouth of waiting child.
Then go for it. Drop a loaded dessert spoon-ish of batter onto the pan, three or four at a time. Wait for bubbles, then turn. Repeat, repeat, repeat, fiddling about with temp occasionally, and carefully rubbing a bit more butter on (remember that thing is HOT) and serve with raspberry jam, butter, cream, those sorts of things.
Also, can I just say if you are thinking of doing crepes… Delia’s recipe is Far Too Eggy. Avoid. There, I have done you a good turn.
PS Hey I’ll tell you what we used to do when we were kids, with the end of the batter and the griddle switched off. Me and my little sister would do our initials with the last drips off the spatula and for some reason they were always the tastiest…
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Tags: dessert, drop scone, pancake, scotch, snack
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We call them drop scones here, and make them on a bakestone greased with butter papers :-)
I love them with butter, and the children like honey (obviously not under 1s!) but golden syrup is good too.
Thanks for sharing – i feel inspired to dust off grandma’s griddle and start dropping!
Mum always use to make us animal pancakes, they tasted the best as well.
with the endy bits? superb.
Ha! YES, we used to get horses and lions and elephants, had completely forgotten about that!
Scotch is a drink.
I think the word you are looking for is Scots.
Great recipe though and thanks for sharing
Hi there Martin, thanks for the heads-up, do you have any advice for my granny as regards her egg-sucking technique? ;D
Thing is, there are 9,900 searches on Google per month for Scotch Pancakes, and zero for Scots… probably because no-one has ever, ever called them Scots Pancakes. Drop scones, yep, but not Scots Pancakes. But yes, absolutely, Scotch is a drink, one that as a born and bred Weegie I am more than familiar with. Cheers!
Teehee! That has ticked me!
Oh dear – I’m with you Aitch. This has got me wanting scotch pancakes but my partner wants to make crepes…. We’ve just started weaning our 6 month old, are pancakes too ambitious for a child that’s just had yummy veg and a tiny bit of chicken so far? Also, should we be avoiding wheat (baby is an eczema sufferer!). Thanks in advance for any help, laura
It’s just impossible for anyone but you to say, I’m afraid, when it comes to the allergies… there’s so much conflicting advice. Were it not for that, of course, i’d say pile into the pancakes.
Thanks – we had pancakes and she loved it! Just been to a weaning talk where they said no protein for 2 weeks after introducing solids – they couldn’t tell me the rationale, should we not wait with blw?
I’ve never heard that before, personally, but come to think of it, the way it worked out we did a couple of weeks of fruit, veg, toast, ricecakes, that sort of thing before we gave them meat. But in our case, that was more for practice than anything else.
Yankee southerner here, and I looooove pancakes! (butter and syrup for me, please!)
Our current fave recipe uses oatmeal and wheat flour, making a very dense and hearty cake, but super yummy and loaded with protein and fibre. If you’re after the traditional golden disk of airiness, this isn’t it, but it is very, very tasty!!
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/oatmeal-and-wheat-flour-blueberry-pancakes/detail.aspx
Oh dear. I like Delia’s crepes.
lol, well there’s always one.
Just tried and found I needed 6 tablespoons of milk to get anything even vaguely resembling batter. Wonder if I cocked up the conversion…
hmm. let me check again, I don’t really do the weighing thing any more so the mistake may be mine.
Nup, no mistake, maybe your egg wis small? ;D I always interpret the ‘ish’ as meaning ‘to taste’ anyway.
My Gran, who was very Scottish called them drop scones, I always thought it was the English who called them Scotch Pancakes!
Maybe you’re right about Delia’s pancakes, never really thought about it before, but perhaps…
Thanks for this recipe. I have been trying lots to try and replicate the drop scones my mother made and this is a good one. For the record (argument) I am Scots and Drop Scone is the Scots name for these but Scotch pancakes elsewhere (probably started after Scots emigrated to the Americas I imagine). On the other argument, Scotch is acceptable for food also, i.e. scotch egg!
EXCELLENT point re Scotch egg. *scotches idea that it should be Scots egg*
Glad you liked ’em, Grandma would be proud.
Great recipe. I added half a mashed banana to the batter to give a lovely fruity taste however it was all a bit too sweet. Might just add the banana and leave out the sugar next time and see how it goes. I’m not sure if my 8 month old enjoyed it or not as unfortunately he is a bit of a nightmare, won’t eat baby food but similarly won’t really swallow any other food. He does however put it in his mouth so I’m taking this as a step in the right direction even though it is all very stressful!
Too much sugar in this recipe. I used to have a really good one but lost it. Thought I try this one but was a huge dissappointment not to mention the annoyance on a busy morning when they all burnt before they got cooked even on low heat. :-(
Lol, I’ll be sure to tell my grandmother that it’s All Her Fault. :D
Yum. Looks like all this dissent is actually just encouraging me to try lots of different variations. And names.
We live to serve…
Me and my 7mth old have just tried these out. First time I’ve ever made pancakes. They were lovely and fluffy, and tasted scrummy! We have eaten the lot between us!!
FANTASTIC!