Pancake Day Ideas
Pancake Day, also known as Shrove Tuesday, is soon approaching on Tuesday the 21st of February. This is the traditional feast day before the start of Lent, which occurs on Ash Wednesday, the 22nd of February this year. Ash Wednesday is celebrated as the first day of Lent, a religious tradition of fasting, 40 days before Easter. Shrove Tuesday was seen as the last opportunity to use up animal product ingredients in your home such as eggs before the beginning of the Lenten Fast. Pancakes were the perfect recipe to do this!
The four basic ingredients to making a pancake were seen to symbolise significant factors of life during this time of year:
Eggs = Creation
Flour = The staff of life
Salt = Wholesomeness
Milk = Purity
With these few ingredients, you can make the perfect student budget-friendly crepes!
Simply add 100g of plain flour, 2 large eggs, and 300ml of milk, with a pinch of salt into a bowl and whisk to a smooth batter. Cook your pancakes in a frying pan over medium heat and flip until golden on both sides. Just add lemon and sugar, or ice-cream and strawberries for this sweet treat. This is both cost-effective and quick and easy to make!
For a gooey, chocolate centre to the pancake, spread Nutella or melted milk chocolate onto the finished crepe, then finely chop up strawberries and sprinkle these on top of the base. Roll up the pancakes and cook in the oven for a few minutes until warm. Sieve powdered sugar on top and enjoy!
Fancy something different? Why not try red velvet pancakes this pancake day! Whilst this recipe is slightly more complex, with more ingredients, it’s still cheaper than eating out and you can celebrate Shrove Tuesday in style.
You will need:
- 200g self-raising flour
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tbsp golden caster sugar
- 3 eggs
- 25g butter
- 230ml milk
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- Red gel food colouring (to allow the pancakes to look like red velvet cake!)
Whisk all of the above ingredients together in a bowl, and then add the food colouring and mix again. Add 2 tbsp of the mixture into your medium heated frying pan and flip, cooking for a couple of minutes on each side. Keep the pancakes on a low setting in the oven to keep warm whilst you sort out the toppings.
For the toppings, mix together 100g of cream cheese and 4tbsp of maple syrup, and drizzle this on top of the pancake. Alternatively, whilst you’re frying your pancakes, add the cream cheese mixture on top of the pancake mixture in the pan, and then add further pancake mixture on top of this, to allow the topping to become a delicious filling inside of the pancake! This is perhaps trickier but still give it a go.
Finish off with a handful of blueberries and raspberries, a larger handful of chocolate chips, and of course a dusting of icing sugar.
If baking isn’t for you, but you still want to celebrate pancake day next week, don’t worry. You could go for a brunch at a nearby restaurant, such as Bills, which does amazing pancakes, or even just buy ready-made crepes or pancakes from your local supermarket to heat up in the microwave and experiment with different toppings instead! This could include any fresh fruit from bananas to berries, maple syrup, whipped cream, jam, peanut butter, nuts, ice-cream, or melted chocolate. If you fancy something savoury or more filling, add bacon and even a sausage onto your pancake.
