I always knew that taking part in the Great Bloggers Bake Off this week was going to be a challenge. With the programme not airing until Wednesday evening, Thursday being my Farm shop baking day with the additional pressure of forty cupcakes to make for a wedding, and then having to leave for a weekend away teaching embroidery on Friday there was a good chance I wasn't going to do it before the weekend if at all. But as many of you already know I am just a little bit bonkers!
I wasn't overly inspired by "Batter Week". The bakers had to make filled Yorkshire puddings for their signature bake, lacy pancakes for the technical challenge and churros for the showstopper. I know I'm probably on my own here but I'm not that keen on Yorkshire puddings. I can make them... and did so on a weekly basis when all the boys were still at home... but I can take them or leave them. I quite liked the idea of making churros and will probably give them a try when I've got more time as that is something I've never tried before. So that left the technical challenge... pancakes. As far as I can see, frying pancakes has very little to do with baking... and is not that much of a challenge either... except these ones were lacy! So I decided to make them for dessert this evening.
I only made half the mixture as with only two of us here I thought twelve pancakes might be a few too many, especially when we don't usually eat dessert. To be fair getting that lacy pattern was trickier than it looked... my first attempt wasn't terribly elegant! But it got easier as I went along. By the last one I'd got the hang of it.
Should you want to try them yourself my pancake mixture was 90g plain flour whisked up with one medium egg, 130ml milk, a dessert spoon of caster sugar and a teaspoon of melted butter. You need a non stick pan smeared with butter and your mixture in a squeezy bottle. Get the pan reasonably hot, squeeze out your design... cook for about a minute until set and flip over to brown the other side... that's all there was to it. If you really want my opinion (and you probably don't) I wouldn't bother with the squeezy bottle and just put spoonfuls of the mixture in the pan to make normal pancakes because I can't see the point of all the lacy nonsense! But what do I know?
I guess they did look pretty and they tasted good with a sprinkle of sugar and ice cream... although bang goes the diet for this week!
Joining in with Jenny of Mummy Mishaps for the Great Bloggers Bake Off.