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…
