Tuesday was pancake day in the UK and Ireland (and also Australia, New Zealand and Canada, it seems).
This is one of the few English traditions that Jan and I keep alive. He’s not a fan of the German carnival – which mostly involves people dressing up, getting drunk and acting like idiots – so when I mentioned that our Shrove Tuesday tradition consisted of stuffing yourself with pancakes (supposedly to get rid of all the fatty/sweet/unhealthy things in your cupboards before giving up everything for Lent) he was all for it.
Pancakes may be the easiest thing in the world to make. My batter consists of 200 g flour, a pinch of salt, 2 eggs and 500 ml of milk. That is it. Really, I could make pancakes any day of the year – I always have those ingredients in the house!
Some people choose to eat pancakes for breakfast on pancake day. Not me! That’s waaaay too much effort first thing in the morning. (I have to leave the house at 10 past 7. Sticking some bread in the toaster is the most you’ll get out of me at that time!). Instead, we have pancakes for tea – and by that I mean the entire meal consists of pancakes, not just dessert. This year, I decided on a chicken, bacon and leek mixture for the savoury filling.
Of course, we had sweet fillings, too – including the classic sugar and lemon juice. As a child, it would never have occurred to me to put anything else on a sweet pancake! I also put out some chocolate hazelnut spread, some vanilla extract and some caramel flavoured syrup.
English pancakes aren’t like American ones. They’re close to crêpes, although not as thin. They do need to be thin enough to roll up though! In the UK, we refer to the thicker, smaller type of pancakes as drop scones or Scotch pancakes.
Here’s one of my pancakes with filling on, waiting to be rolled up:
The mixture made a total of 9 pancakes, so I had 4 and Jan had 5. Quite restrained for pancake day – usually I would make many, many more. After all, it’s tradition! 😉
Confuzzledom 
I LOVE fat Tuesday! That;s what we call it in Canada. We made crepes here in Switzerland.
Crepes. Yum!! Wikipedia told me it was pancake day in Canada as well – guess they’ve got it wrong 🙂
That’s when I like to have my pancakes on pancake day too – for tea! I dispense altogether with the savoury ones and go straight to the sweet – always either lemon and sugar (from childhood when there was no alternative) or, butter and sugar. Mmmmmm. The smaller, fatter pancakes that you call drop scones or Scotch pancakes, are just called pancakes in Scotland! 😉
So what are English pancakes called? Are those crepes to the Scottish? Ahh, now I’m confused (and my post is all wrong….) 😉
I think now, in Scotland, the larger pancakes are just called pancakes too. When I was growing up, our family called the large thin pancakes ‘crepes’ but I don’t think that was the general Scottish term. I think I may just have made things more confusing! 😉
To an American, those are crepes. Our “pancakes” are thick and fluffy. But regardless of what we call them, those look delicious!
They were delicious 🙂
Proper French crepes are thinner than our pancakes though. Thick pancakes to me are either frop scones or American-style pancakes.
The best pancakes I ever had were in the Netherlands. Theirs are thin too, and HUGE! They put toppings on rather than filling them.
Yep, those look fantastic!
And they were 😀
oh my goodness pancake day is the greatest concept for a holiday EVER. Why don’t Americans celebrate this?
I don’t know, but they definitely should! Everyone needs pancake day!
I’m so jealous that you had pancakes! It didn’t really seem worth cooking them for one (where’s the fun in that?!) so hopefully my mum and I will have a belated pancake day sometime in the summer or something random like that, until then…! When I was little the best pancake I ever had was filled with (exploding with) gino ginellis (remember that ice cream?!) mint choc chip ice cream (the best ice cream EVER!), caramel sauce, chocolate sauce and chocolate sprinkles!
OMG, that pancake sounds amazing!!
My dad has made Christmas dinner for me in August before, so why not pancake day in summer 😀
Yum, they look delicious! 🙂
They were 😀 So simple to make, but sooo good!