Happy birthday to my beautiful daughter.  This is her first birthday I have ever not shared with her and I felt very sad about it this morning.  Lara always has pancakes for breakfast on her birthday.  They are American pancakes which are thick and light and fluffy and served with maple syrup.   It is her favourite food and we make the birthday pancakes from a wonderful book called The Heritage of Southern Cooking.  This is one of my favourite cookbooks for reading through as it is quite chatty and has lots of information about the heritage of some of the dishes and photos from the South in times gone by.  How can you not love a book with recipes for “Charleston Cream of Oyster Soup”, “Old Seelbach House Perfect Chicken Hash”, “Clouds in Chocolate Cream” and”Tender Coconut Custard”?

We made these pancakes over Christmas, so in honour of my daughter, I share this wonderful recipe with you all today.  Lara had to make her own pancakes today (which she did 🙂 ) and these are pictures of some we shared a few weeks ago.  I have been eating American pancakes as long as I can remember and this is the best recipe by light years.

These pancakes can in no way be classified as diet friendly or healthy.  They are loaded with refined carbs and sugar and fat.  But they taste so amazing, everyone should eat these at least once in their lives and enjoy them.

They are not the quickest to make so take heed of the introduction to the recipe in the book:

American Pancakes

• 7 tbsp unsalted butter
  2 ½ cups / 375 g plain flour
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 ½ tsp salt
• 2 tbsp baking powder
• 3 large eggs, separated
• 2 cups / 400 ml milk*
• 4 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
  Banana (optional)
  Crispy bacon (optional)

* we have made these with soya milk and they work very well.  Use your preferred milk.

Method

• Gently melt 7 tbsp butter over a low heat.  Set aside when it is melted.
• Sift the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in to a bowl and set aside.
• Put the egg yolks in a large bowl and blend.  Add the milk and blend again, either by hand or with an electric whisk.
• Add the dry ingredients (flour etc) and blend gently but thoroughly.
• Gently stir in the melted butter.

• Beat the egg whites until they are stiff.  Gently fold in to the batter mixture.

•  If you can bear to wait, let the batter stand for 20 – 30 minutes.  We have never managed to wait and they taste great!
• Melt the solid buyer with the oil in a small saucepan and use to cook the pancakes.
• Heat up a heavy based pan and add a small amount of the butter oil mix.  Brush the butter/oil over the pan base.
• Add batter to pan – 3 – 4 tbsp for each pancake is plenty.
• If you want a banana pancake, push slices of banana in to the pancake as they are cooking.

• When the underside is brown, turn the pancakes over.  You can tell they are ready for turning because the pancake can easily be pushed around the pan and the top side has lots of air holes.
• Serve at once with butter and maple syrup.  Bacon is good on the side if you have any.

These pancakes are a little taste of heaven – try them 🙂

I did not have pancakes today.  I had a ham omelette with spinach.

While the omelette was folded over in the pan, I put the spinach in the other half of the pan so it could wilt slightly.  A very tasty and sugar free and low carb breakfast.

We went out for lunch with Kath and Matt.  They are preparing to emigrate to New Zealand ( 😦 😦 😦 ) so we are trying to make the most of them being round the corner.  I had asked Matt in the week to help me with something for an interview I have next week.  Yes of course he said.  All come over for lunch and we can chat.  So we did.

 We did not dine on mince but we had wholewheat pasta with chicken and vegetables with some cheese on top.

Followed by slices of quince in a crumble and custard.  Eaten with a silver spoon – we couldn’t find a runcible one.

At the moment, they live in Smarden where several of their neighbours have quince trees.  If you have never had a quince then look out for them.  They are a a member of the apple family and look like a small lumpy yellow apple.  But they are incredibly hard and inedible raw.  Kath baked them in the oven until they were soft and then peeled them and made a crumble with them.  They turn a lovely reddy brown colour when they are cooked and taste delicious.  So delicious I had a second helping.  Which was really naughty but I couldn’t help it.

So having rung up to ask a favour, we ended up being fed and I was given a gorgeous suit and jacket too.  You can see why we love these guys!!

We are in Ramsgate for the rest of the weekend.   I had bought some salmon and loads of veg for supper but I am so full that I have decided to not eat anything else until tomorrow.  I am enjoying a lovely glass of red wine though.  We may go and hold hands and dance on the sand in the light of the moon.