I try and make up some thing for the family to have for snacks once a week or so. I don't always manage it, but in the efforts to avoid everything that is wrapped in plastic, actually baking some of it yourself is sometimes the only answer - and I do love me a scotch pancake!
As batch bakes go, this is one of my favourites at the moment, they're nice fresh, but you can also stick most of them in the freezer and then from there either directly into a packed lunch box for snack time or if they're for me - straight into the toaster (and then a teeny bit of butter). Unlike baking a regular cake you can eat a bunch as you cook and I'm not sure you can beat the satisfaction of watching the bubbles come up through the batter as it cooks and then flipping it over and the whole thing rise. However, no raw cake mix to eat is definitely a downside.
On Monday I made up a batch - it wasn't a plan that went desperately smoothly as all children decided they wanted to be involved. I wish I can say they were super helpful, but I try not to lie too egregiously on this blog.
The recipe looks something like this:
220g Self Raising Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
Pinch of Salt
50g Caster Sugar
2 Eggs 280ml Milk (or a little bit less)
1 Tbs Vegetable Oil
(mix dry ingredients and then use a whisk to beat in the eggs and milk)
Except if you're going to make enough to freeze you might as well make twice the quantity.
I also put 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder in once half of them were made so we had some chocolate pancakes for a bit of variety.
Here are some photos of Pip 'helping', by which I mean refusing to actually stir the mix and instead trying to eat all the mix raw. I don't normally bother getting the kenwood out for something as easy as pancake batter, but the splash guard is very good at stopping their faces from eating it all before its actually made.
I always have a foolish belief when I start cooking pancakes, that this will be the time I manage to make them all round and vaguely uniform. This is never the case, and particularly on this occasion, as no sooner had I got the pan to the right temperature, one of the three children (or a combination of two) contrived to do something ridiculous/start crying/screaming/fighting over a toy/need the toilet, and thus perfection was cast desultorily out the metaphorical window and I gave in to the necessity of an assortment of orderless sizes and for a few to be unrescuably burnt and cast into the bin.
The hapharzardly cooked pancakes did go down pretty well - however, neither of the ambulatory children allowed me to get even a half decent picture of them eating the yummy food which we had so lovingly created as a family (sarcasm in case it wasn't obvious) so I turned to the baby...
awwwww.