Scotch Pancakes

You hear the gravel on the drive crunching as the kids arrive home. Everything is on the kitchen table ready to be combined to make delicious smelling, fabulous and filling little treats.  I get the kids to mix all the ingredients together and within minutes we are concocting our way to the best scotch pancakes in the world - because the ones you make yourself come with amazing memories of wet autumn afternoons as a family.

 OK so a bit (a lot) 'rose coloured glasses' but I genuinely love things that are easy, you don't have to be a great cook to make and act as an activity to bring the family together  - even better give me an excuse to be a fun Mum and eat nice food. These are great easy discovery that I wouldn't have dreamed of cooking 3 years ago and would have thought you could only get from a shop.



Ingredients1/2 teaspoon white wine vinegar
150ml milk
110g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 egg
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon golden syrup

Method

Put the vinegar into the milk (use the microwave to take the chill of it if straight from the fridge) and leave while you sort out the other ingredients.
Put the flour into a bowl and add the bicarbonate of soda.
In another bowl pop in the egg, oil, and then with the oily spoon measure the syrup in and whisk everything together. Brilliant, the oil makes the syrup slide straight of the spoon. Not so brilliant, less spoon licking - you can't win them all.
Add the vinegary milk to this mixture, then add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix to a batter.

Heat a heavy non-stick pan with no oil. Add 1 1/2 tablespoons of batter to make each Scotch pancake, and then when bubbles appear flip them over to make them golden brown on either side. I use my ladle for this, which is perhaps why they are always oval rather than round. They cook deceptively quickly and it generally takes me a couple of goes to get the temperature of the pan right.



If you want to add interesting ingredients drop them into the pancake immediately after putting in the pan - we tried raisins, chopped dried apricots, choc chips, diced cooked apple and cinnamon.

This version is Nigella's and can be found here.