Before I had children, when I was on holiday I would pore over my guidebooks in the morning (this was pre-internet) and try to figure a way of fitting in breakfast, lunch and dinner without exploding like Mr Creosote. When you travel with kids, you have to put their needs first (otherwise nobody has any fun) so on our recent trip in the States mealtimes were dominated by street food, picnics and snacks.
We did have plenty of diner breakfasts, though, and I realised that my pancakes had become a little bit, well, sad. One of the first things I did when I got home was to search out a decent recipe for American-style pancakes and then adjust and tweak it. I'm pretty happy with the results - light but still with plenty of texture and flavour.
Ingredients
1 egg
20 ml vegetable oil
175 g self-raising flour
a pinch of salt
2 tablespoons caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
Method
- Measure the milk into a jug, add the beaten egg, the vegetable oil and the vinegar, and leave to stand for 5 minutes.
- Measure the self-raising flour, maizemeal, salt, sugar and baking powder into a mixing bowl.
- Add the milk and egg to the dry ingredients and mix briefly until just combined.
- Put a heavy-based frying pan on a medium heat and brush with a little oil. Pour a ladleful of the batter into the pan, and cook at a low heat until it starts to form a skin on top. Flip over and cook the other side and cook until golden.
The vinegar and milk mixture is an attempt to recreate buttermilk. If you have access to buttermilk, then use that instead. The maizemeal adds texture, flavour and colour, so resist the temptation to replace it with flour.
