The Best Buttermilk Pancakes

My husband and I recently had a small morning argument about pancakes. After some chivvying, he got up and made pancakes for breakfast (I make nice Saturday morning breakfasts all the time, without chivvying). For reasons only he knows, he eschewed all of the recipes I've already blogged, and found yet another random one on the internet to try. Again forgetting previous advice, he decided not to separate the eggs and whip the whites, used a random mug instead of a proper measuring cup for the flour, tried making his own buttermilk, and overbeat the batter. The result: bouncy tough glue circles; what I imagine dwarves chew for breakfast. Even with as nice toppings as I could find, they were inedible.

I spent half an hour or so Googling until I found someone who'd already been through this loop, and found the perfect husband-proof buttermilk pancake recipe. No egg white separation, but you will still need to remind him to buy buttermilk, and to leave batter barely mixed. I have updated it to metric quantities with Australian ingredients (I think our buttermilk is thicker). We didn't think we would eat all of these, but they were so delicious we polished them off. You'd be healthier splitting these between three people, or four as part of a brunch.

Ingredients

• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 250g plain flour
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2 eggs, slightly whisked
• 500ml Casa Buttermilk
• 2 tablespoons melted butter

Method

In a medium bowl, stir together the salt, baking powder, baking soda, flour and sugar. In a separate larger bowl, whisk together the eggs and buttermilk. Drizzle in the butter as you continue to whisk.

Switch to a wooden spoon and pour the dry ingredients on top of the wet; stir until almost completely combined. The more you stir pancake batter, the more flat and tough the pancakes will be, so mix only until a few streaks of flour are remaining.

Butter and heat a pancake pan and cook ladlefuls of batter until bubbles begin to form, flip and cook until golden. Serve immediately: I like mine with maple syrup, crème fraiche and strawberries.

Banana Pancakes

This is my new favourite weekend morning breakfast! The only problem is, I have to patiently wait all week for a couple of bananas to overripen: rare in our house. I used this recipe but substituting homemade buttermilk (milk with some lemon juice left for a few minutes); I reckon real buttermilk would give an even fluffier result. I halved this recipe to make enough for two.

Ingredients

• 200g (1 1/3 cups) plain flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 55g (1/4 cup) sugar
• 2 eggs
• 250g mashed banana
• 330ml (1 1/3 cups) buttermilk
• 40g butter, melted

Combine all of the ingredients together, stirring until the flour is no longer visible. Fry in dollops until golden brown (about a minute) and then flip for another minute. Serve with sour cream, maple syrup, and strawberries.

Okonomiyaki (Japanese Savoury Pancake)

Another inspiration from my amazing Flavour Thesaurus, with guidance from one of my favourite food blogs and a helpful Japanese cooking info page. This time I was reading the underwhelming-sounding 'cabbage and egg' section. Turns out the Japanese have a long tradition of making these gorgeous savoury pancakes with a range of different ingredients, but almost-always including shredded cabbage as the base. And since cabbage was on my list of 'cheap veg at the market this week', I have a whole head to use up. I made up the money saved buying the cabbage by buying beautiful katsuobushi, the dried bonito flakes that 'dance' in the convection currents generated by the hot pancake. I also made my own okonomiyaki sauce, which meant I had to buy ketchup for the first time in my life. Oh well - maybe when winter rolls around I'll deep-fry some potato chips. Or, more likely, I'll just make these again, because they were AMAZING! Even easier to flip than Korean pancakes, less fiddly than fried veggie fritters, and absolutely divine in flavour. I think it's worth putting in the extra effort to make the sauce, and track down the katsuobushi and wakame (dried seaweed).

Ingredients

What is so exciting about this seaweed??

For the pancake: 

• 1/4 white/green cabbage
• 1 carrot
• 2 spring onions
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup room-temperature dashi stock (substitute seafood stock, or vegetable stock, or even water)
• 1 cup plain flour

For the toppings:

• 2tbsp ketchup (tomato sauce)
• 2tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• 2 tbsp mayonnaise
• 50g katsuobushi (fine bonito flakes)
• a small handful of wakame (dried seaweed)

Japanese pancake on the barbie.
Now that's what I call fusion food :)

Shred the cabbage, grate the carrot and finely slice the spring onions. Combine with the egg, stock and flour in a large mixing bowl. Get a bbq hot plate nice and hot and brush generously with oil. When you can see it start to shimmer, plop the mixture onto the hotplate and push down and smooth out to make a pancake or two (how many depends on your confidence in your ability to flip them!). Close the lid and bbq for 5-10 minutes, until crisp and golden on the bottom, and cooked through enough not to fall apart when you lift the edges with a spatula. Flip onto the other side and cook for a further 5-10 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine the ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and sugar in a small bowl, to make the okonomiyaki sauce. Put the mayonnaise in a small plastic bag with the corner cut off, or piping bag, if it's not in a squeezy bottle already. When the pancake is nearly done, turn off the heat and brush the top surface with the okonomiyaki sauce. Pipe on the mayonnaise in long lines, or whatever pattern you like. Tip on the katsuobushi and scatter with a handful of wakame. Serve hot off the grill, with the bonito flakes dancing to their tasty song :)

Crepes

A wonderful way to start the weekend - although taking the time to make them after Zumba and a shower was an exercise in patience! I used to use Delia's recipe but nowadays I just chuck a load of ingredients in a bowl and whisk them all together at once, then thin it out with water as needed. Ingredients being: three eggs, about 3/4 cup of flour, about the same again in milk, a tbsp ish of vegetable oil, a tsp of sugar and a pinch of salt. Toppings are more important! My favourite combinations are:

• Peanut butter and banana slices
• plain white sugar and lemon juice
• maple syrup and crème fraîche

And I had a cup of tea while making them. YUM.

Sweet Potato Pancakes

A great way to start the weekend, and use up a bit of spare sweet potato and egg whites at the same time :) Modified this recipe. Usual tall-pancake tips apply: don't overbeat the batter, don't swill around the pan like a crepe, do cook over a low heat so it rises and cooks through, and do serve as quick as you can so they're still hot and fluffy. We topped these with sliced plums and maple syrup, and I also had one with a spread of peanut butter - yum!

Ingredients:

• 1/3rd of a sweet potato (about 150g unpeeled)
• 2 tbsp butter
• 3/4 cup plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• a sprinkling of ground nutmeg
• 2 egg whites, or one large egg
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp sugar

Peel and cut the sweet potato into chunks, then boil for 6-7 minutes, until tender. Drain and mash with the butter, then set aside to cool. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and nutmeg. Whisk the egg whites until frothy, then combine with sugar, salt, milk and mashed potato (in the mashing pan is fine). Pour the liquid ingredients into the flour mixture, and stir gently to combine, stopping as soon as no further dry flour shows. Ladle a quarter of the batter at a time into a pancake pan over a moderate heat, flipping each pancake when the base is golden brown - about a minute or two. Put on a warm plate, sort out your toppings, and serve.

Peking Duck Pancakes

After eating all the nice crispy legs and wings yesterday, we were left with two lovely cooked duck breasts. I had a huge craving for duck with pancakes, so dropped by the Oriental Supermarket on the way home to see if they had the right kind of pancakes. Sadly, they did not. So I picked up a kilo of rice flour and some Peking Duck sauce, and headed home to get cooking!

Googling for duck pancake recipes, I found that many chefs simply made French-style crepes, which I have indeed done before for this meal. But I really felt like the floury, slightly chewy, aromatic rice pancakes you get in Chinese restaurants. I found a great recipe on Youtube by VideoJug showing exactly how to make them at home, and since the whole process was new to me, I followed the recipe exactly. I was absolutely amazed at the results - a stack of wafer-thin rice pancakes, aromatic with sesame oil, ever so slightly caramelised in places and wonderfully soft and flexible. It did take an hour or so the first time, but I think I could make these a lot faster with some practice. I tried to speed things up by using the breadmaker but actually it didn't save any time as the dough was very sticky and got stuck in the paddle.

To go with, I stir-fried a couple of spring onions with a large bunch of pak choi (stalks for 1-2 minutes, then leaves with a splash of soy sauce). The duck we simply shredded; we deseeded and sliced a cucumber and chopped up some coriander. I don't like raw spring onion in my duck pancakes :)

I'll recap the pancake recipe here but the video is worth a watch for a nice clear demonstration. This makes enough for about 4-5 people, or 8 for a starter. We froze the extras.

My pancake-making set-up, with tea-towels temporarily folded
back to show the uncooked (left) and cooked (right) pancakes.

Ingredients:

• 300 g flour - I used half rice, half plain white (wheat)
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 240 ml boiling water
• 2 tbsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp of vegetable oil, combined
• some flour for dusting

Mix the flour, sugar and water together until it forms a sticky dough. Generously sprinkle the dough with some flour, dust the work surface with more flour, and spoon the dough into the flour. Fold the dough and knead it for a few minutes. Don't be afraid to add more flour to the dough, if necessary, as it might still be too sticky. Continue to knead until the dough takes on a smooth, non sticky, elastic consistency. Finally, cover it with a clean, damp tea towel and set it aside for 30 minutes, to rest. (I only left it for 15 minutes and it was fine.)

The finished stack, with shredded duck, sliced cucumber,
chopped fresh coriander,  a ramekin of Peking duck sauce,
and bowls of stir-fried pak choi.

Uncover the dough and cut it in half. Rub the rolling pin with flour and roll one half into a thin sheet of about 1/2 cm in thickness. Repeat exactly the same process with the other piece. (I thought this sounded thick, but it's fine, you'll roll it again in a minute!)

Take one sheet and cut it into circles using a 7cm biscuit cutter or the rim of a large mug. Take off the excess pastry but do not discard. You can roll it again later. Now brush each circle with a little bit of oil. Place one disk on top of the other, with their oiled sides together, to create a pair and repeat exactly the same process with the other half of the dough. It's vital to cover with a damp tea towel to retain the moisture.

Re- flour the working surface. Take each pair and using your rolling pin, roll them out to make them paper thin. Repeat until all of the pairs are rolled flat. Then cover again to retain the moisture.

Place the frying pan onto a medium-high heat and allow it to get very hot. Do not add any oil. When the pan is hot enough, add a pancake. Let it cook for about 1.5 minutes, until it begins to look char-grilled and slightly inflated. Then turn it over and cook other side. Remove it from the pan and separate it into two pancakes. You may want to leave it for a minute or so as they are very hot. This method of cooking gives one slightly charred side, and a moist side. It also gives the pancakes more flavour and the dough is more elastic. Repeat with the rest of the pancakes. As soon as you remove a pancake from the pan, put it on top of the stack and keep the stack covered with a tea towel so it doesn't dry out.

Mushroom and Spinach Pancakes with Goats Cheese

I was planning to make a mushroom and goats cheese pizza or calzone this week, but today I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was Pancake Day! It's not as celebrated here as in the UK - probably because cooking a stack of pancakes on a hot stove when it's 40C outside is not a smart move. It's unusually cool this summer - just 28C this evening - so it wasn't too hot to make pancakes instead.

I googled for a recipe to convert my pizza topping into crepe filling, and stumbled across a lovely blog, Closet Cooking, which appears to be run by a guy called Kevin, cooking in a kitchen the size of a closet. I remember those days well! I love using blog recipes because they're made by real people, with real ingredients, and usually around the time constraints of a real job and in a real kitchen. So you know that it's doable in a sensible amount of time, and you're not going to find that the whole thing depends on some obscure ingredient or kitchen implement. So I followed Kevin's excellent recipe for yummy vegetarian savoury filling for whole-wheat pancakes, and they were spot-on. I did change just a couple of things so I've reblogged the recipe with my changes. My only mistake was not tripling the batter so that I'd have to make sweet pancakes :)

Ingredients:
For the filling:

• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 500g mushrooms
• a few sprigs of thyme, stripped to their leaves
• 250g frozen chopped spinach
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 splash dry sherry, or splash white wine + 1tsp of sugar
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar 
• 6 wholewheat crepes
• 1 large handful goat cheese, crumbled

For the pancakes (makes 6):

• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup plain white flour
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil

Set your spinach defrosting (in the microwave or on the hob).

Whisk all the batter ingredients together to create the pancake batter and start making crepes. You'll probably find that the chaff of the wholewheat flour sinks to the bottom, so try to ladle up the lower layer occasionally, and add a little water toward the end if you find that the batter becomes too thick.

Drain the spinach well, in a sieve. Crush it a bit with your hands to get all the water out.

Finely chop the onion and gently fry until soft and turning golden, about 8 minutes. Slice the mushrooms thinly. Crush the garlic and add it, the butter, the mushrooms and the thyme to the onions, then sweat for a further 6-10 minutes, until the mushrooms have let out their liquid. Add the spinach and season well with pepper, and a little salt; warm through. Reduce the balsamic vinegar in a small saucepan - it takes a couple of minutes.

Fold the crepes into little pockets and scoop in the filling, tucking in crumbled goats cheese as you go. Drizzle over the balsamic reduction and serve!

Fluffy Pancakes

This is a great way to start your Sunday, especially if you have nothing planned and just want to chill out and digest for the rest of the day! I used my take on Delia's recipe, although I didn't have any buttermilk, so I added a bit of crème fraîche and milk instead. And I poured the combined flour-and-milk-and yolk into the whites instead of the other way around - it actually worked a bit better. However I didn't remember to add the oil so you can see the pancakes were noticeably less conductive, and didn't brown as evenly as in my previous photo. Still totally yum in the Perth sunshine!

Hameul Pajeon

Ahh, the Korean seafood pancake! From the first time I had it in our local Korean restaurant, I was hooked. The simplest form is makde with flour, water, a little egg and shredded spring onions. It's so easy that I've even made it on a yacht at 45 degrees heel - admittedly, the cooker was on gimbals. My only difficulty is making it thin enough; over the years I have added more and more batter until it has come out quite thick and glutinous. Recently I went back to Little Seoul and ordered it again, and realised that while it is a thicker pancake than a crepe, it is still thin enough to cook through when crisped up on both sides. Therefore I suggest using a pancake pan rather than a frying pan, and only add enough extra ingredients as your batter can take. The recipe below serves four people as a side dish or starter.

Ingredients:
For the pancake:

• 1 egg
• 1 cup plain all-purpose flour
• 1 cup cold water
• 5 medium spring onions
• 1/2 cup of cooked brown shrimp or other small seafood, drained of any excess water

For the dipping sauce:

• 1/4 cup of medium soy sauce (or diluted down dark soy sauce)
• 1/2 clove garlic, finely minced
• 1/2 spring onion, finely minced
• 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
• 1/2 tsp chilli flakes (optional)

Combine the dipping sauce ingredients, whisking gently so the oil is mixed through. Leave to the side while you prepare the pancakes so that the flavours can mellow together.

Break the egg into a bowl and whisk until the yolk and white are combined. Add in half the flour and a quarter of the water and whisk until smooth. Add the rest of the flour and water and combine into a fairly smooth batter, but don't over-beat or the gluten will become tough. Clean, top and tail, slice along the length of the spring onions, and roughly shred, separating the layers. Stir into the batter.

Heat a few tbsp of vegetable oil in a pancake pan until shimmering. Pour in the batter and spread out to the edges with a spatula. Add the shrimp and push them into the batter with the spatula. Cook for about five minutes on a moderate heat, until the bottom is golden brown. Either flip carefully with a large slice-spatula, or slide onto a plate and quickly overturn back into the pan. Cook for a further 3-4 minutes until the other side is done. Rest for a minute or two before slicing into strips or triangles and serve with the dipping sauce.

Stuffed Pancakes

It's pancake day, so here comes a pancake recipe! My mum used to make these every few months for us as kids, and we were always really excited whenever she got the pancake pan out. She used to make two different fillings, one with tuna, and one with vegetables and a white sauce, top them with cheese and bake for 20 minutes. After the savouries (1 of each, seconds first for the eldest :) we'd always be looking forward to the sweet dessert pancakes with sugar and lemon. Good times!

This is a little adaptation I tried out tonight, combining the two ideas: tuna with vegetables, and bulked a little with some cannelini beans. If you're vegetarian, you could just omit the tuna. I use a similar technique as when I make chicken enchiladas: cooking the filling in its own juices briefly, then filling the pancakes and topping with a small amount of white sauce to keep them from crisping too much, then of course cheddar cheese. But unlike tortillas, pancakes can't take lots of strong flavours, so I keep this dish interesting with a gentle use of herbs and letting the filling be a little inhomogeneous.

This serves three, a bit of an awkward number, but the SO is heading off later this week and I wanted an extra portion to reheat later! You could always serve four with this amount, and just have some good bread and salad on the side. You'll need a quality, fairly deep oven pan for this, preferably rectangular, and of course a decent pancake pan.

Ingredients:
For the pancakes:

• 200g plain flour
• 4 eggs
• plenty of milk
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil

For the filling:

• 1 fat leek
• 3 stems of celery
• 2 carrots
• 2 tomatoes
• pinch of thyme
• 1-2 tins tuna
• 1 tin cannelini (or butter) beans

For the white sauce:

• Knob of butter
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 200ml milk
• grating of nutmeg
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 handful finely chopped parsley

Put the flour in a big bowl and break your eggs in. Whisk them into the flour using a balloon whisk until you have a thick paste with few or no lumps; try not to overmix or the gluten will start going tough. Add milk, a little at a time, and whisk in until your batter has the consistency of thin cream. You can check this by lifting up some of the batter and pouring it with a spoon. It should pour easily, and will be thinner than you expect if you haven't made pancakes before. Whisk in the salt and vegetable oil - the latter will float on the surface but don't worry about it.

Heat the pancake pan to a moderate heat and add enough batter, rotating the pan so it covers it all to make a thin pancake, as large as the width of your oven pan. It's great if you can have someone make all the pancakes while you get on with the filling!

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Slice the leek lengthwise, wash out the dirt from the outer leaves, top and tail and finely chop. Sautee in a little butter over a moderate heat until softened. Meanwhile, dice the celery and carrots, then add and stir in. Dice the tomatoes, then stir them in with the pinch of thyme; cover and allow to cook through for five minutes. The carrots should be just done. Drain your tins; wash the beans (I hate that gloopy weird stuff they float in!); and add the contents to the pan. Break up the tuna into large-ish chunks. Don't be tempted to stir it all in, just combine gently. Cover and allow to heat through for a few minutes.

Meanwhile, make the white sauce. Personally I always do this in the microwave: 20 seconds for the butter, stir in the flour, then add the milk a very little at a time, stirring thoroughly between each addition. Add the nutmeg, bay leaf, and a little seasoning, then microwave for 2 minutes. Stir thoroughly again, especially paying attention the the bottom and sides of the jug, then microwave again for a further minute. Add the parsley, stir and leave to the side. This is not an especially thick white sauce: you can make a thicker one by upping the proportion of flour and cooking for longer.

When all your components are ready, lay a pancake in your oven dish and 1/nth of your filling, where you have n pancakes. Roll it up, and repeat until all your pancakes are filled and nestled in the dish. Pour over the white sauce and top with grated cheddar cheese. Bake for 20 minutes, until golden brown on top. Delicious, unchallenging comfort food.