I love Shrove Tuesday - so much so that I think Neil and I will be foregoing any attempt to have anything savoury for tea tonight in favour of gorging ourselves to the point of painful gluttony on chocolate pancakes. In fact I believe it might actually be a fact that calories don't count on Pancake Day.
Okay okay, that's clearly a load of rubbish (same as calories not counting if they're from someone else's plate - which is also codswallop) but I just don't think they're worth worrying about today. Shrove Tuesday pretty much falls into the same category as Christmas Day - all attempts to eat healthily or moderately are suspended.
So here I'm going to post my thoughts on finding supermarket-free pancake ingredients and a couple of favourite recipes.
But first I must share this... possibly one of the most exciting press packs I've ever recieved in the Derby Telegraph newsroom.
I arrived at work this morning to find a huge and mysterious-looking brown package, which turned out to contain some wooden cooking implements, a little pancake recipe book, a citrus fruit juicer and a lemon. Now I've had various strange press packs in my time (I used to be the health reporter - 'nuff said!) but no one has ever successfully mailed me a fresh fruit before!
It turned out that the clever PR bods at Westfield Derby - the city's big shopping centre - had sent the package along with a press release about today's Shrove Tuesday activities. Towards the end of last year the centre appointed its "Panel of Fun" - a group of local kids who get to do cool stuff like test out toys. And today the panel will be launching a pancake making master class and dishing our free pancakes to shoppers.
The press release also contains some interesting statistics. Apparenty 38% of people surveyed in Derby are traditionalists who like a squeeze of lemon on their pancakes, while 21% like to funk it up with orange juice - a tactic I may try myself tonight. But sadly a whopping one in three shoppers said they bought packets of pancake mix rather than making a batter.
I find this quite staggering when you consider that a basic pancake mix consists of eggs (free range please), flour and milk. In keeping with the spirit of this blog, all of the above can be bought from your local corner shop or farm shop, so no need to go to the supermarket. In fact, seeing as Shrove Tuesday is also the last day before lent - why not consider giving up the supermarkets this year? A much more positive move than quitting chocolate or wine!
When my brother and I were kids we used to make pancakes for the family every Saturday evening and we certainly didn't use a measuring jug or scales. We literally cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl, added a good splash of milk and a spoonful of plain flour, and whisked it until it was fairly thick, but not quite as thick as Yorkshire pudding batter. And most of the time those pancakes turned out to be pretty good. It really is very hard to mess up pancake mixture.
But just in case you're still not convinced, here are a couple of my current favourite pancake recipes.
CHOCOLATE PANCAKES
Neil got me the GU Chocolate Cookbook for Christmas and ever since I've been pretty much dumping dark chocolate into everything I cook. But the recipe it contains for chocolate pancakes is quite simply spectacular.
INGREDIENTS:
100G plain flour
1tsp baking powder
2 tbsp cocoa powder
150ml milk
3 eggs, seperated
pinch of salt
caster sugar
100g chocolate chips
METHOD:
Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder into a bowl. Beat the milk and egg yolks in a seperate jug and then mix them into the dry ingredients. Whisk the egg whites with an electric hand mixer in a bowl until they turn to soft peaks, then gradually whisk in the salt and sugar until it resembles shaving foam. With a metal spoon stir the first third of the egg whites into the batter, then gently fold in the rest. Heat a non stick pan with a little butter and pour in a bit of the batter, then sprinkle a few choc chips over it, and spread a little more batter over the top to prevent them from burning. Cook for 30 seconds on one side then flip and cook for the same amount of time on the other.
Ta-dah! Amazing chocolate pancakes. This cook book really is ace! We like to serve them with cream or creme freiche, strawberries, raspberries and nutella for a spectacularly chocolately experience. They make a great posh brunch if you've got pals coming round too.
BASIC RECIPE
Okay, if you don't trust my childhood pancake making instructions above, here is a basic recipe that should make pretty decent pancakes, to which you can then add whatever you wish...
INGREDIENTS:
150g plain flour
1tbsp sugar
pinch of salt
2 beaten eggs
250ml milk
2 tbsp butter
METHOD:
Put flour in a bowl and mix in sugar, salt, eggs and milk, then beat until smooth. Heat the butter in a frying pan, add a dash of the mixture, fry for 30-60 seconds, flip and fry for the same amount of time on the other side.
See, it really is spectacularly easy. If you've bought a mixture then you should hang your head in shame.
Happy pancake day everyone!
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