These are those thick, spongy American pancakes that are often eaten with warm maple syrup and crisp fried bacon. I love them with the syrup alone, but if you do want bacon, I think streaky is best: you want a crisp salty ribbon of it here. You can easily cook these pancakes by dolloping the batter on to a hot griddle or heavy based pan.
Serves 4-6
plain flour 225g
baking powder 2½ tsp
salt a pinch
sugar 1 tsp
eggs 2 large, beaten
butter 30g, melted and cooled
milk 300ml
butter for frying
The easiest way to make these is to put all the ingredients into a blender and blitz. But if you do mix up the batter by hand in a bowl, make a well in the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar, beat in the eggs, melted butter and milk, and transfer to a jug: it’s much easier to pour the batter into the pan than to spoon it. Heat a smooth griddle or pan on the stove.
When you cook the pancakes, all you need to remember is that when the upper side of the pancake is blistering and bubbling it’s time to cook the second side, and this needs only about 1 minute, if that.
I get about 16 silver-dollar-sized pancakes out of this.
Variation: Sprinkle blueberries onto the uncooked side of the pancake just after you’ve poured the batter into the pan.
From How To Be A Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson (Chatto & Windus, £27.50)
