I’ve tried quite a few different types of pancakes, but I think traditional pancakes with sugar and lemon are my overall favourite. My kids love pancakes, and it’s their breakfast of choice for any special occasions such as their birthdays. Here are some of the recipes that I’ve used time and again over the last few years.
I know you can buy packets of ready made mix, but there couldn’t be anything simpler than this recipe, and you’ve probably already got all the ingredients at home already.
I wasn’t sure before I made these, but the bacon with the maple syrup just goes. If you’ve been sitting on the fence, just give them a go. It’s delicious!
I wish I could take credit for these Red Velvet Pancakes, but this recipe has been put together by the Chef’s at Gousto.
Ingredients (Serves 2):
For the pancakes:
115g self-raising flour
15g cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp honey
2 eggs
1 tbsp vegetable oil, plus extra for frying
130ml milk
A couple of drops of red food colouring
30g dark chocolate chips
For the cream cheese frosting:
1.5 tbsp honey
120g cream cheese
To serve:
Chocolate sauce and chocolate shavings
How To:
Step 1: Grab a bowl and mix together the flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, and a pinch of salt. Make a well in the middle of your dry ingredients and add the eggs, honey, veg oil, milk, and food colouring.
Step 2: Beat the wet ingredients together then stir in the dry ingredients until you have a batter. Don’t worry if there are a few lumps.
Tip: Don’t over-mix your batter! It will make your pancakes less fluffy (and no one likes a limp pancake).
Step 3: Heat some oil in a non-stick frying pan. Ladle in 1/6 of your batter then sprinkle a few chocolate chips on top. Cook for 2 minutes, or until bubbles form on top of the pancake, then flip over and cook for another 2 minutes until golden. Repeat with the remaining batter.
Tip: Use medium heat until the pan is hot, then reduce to a medium-low. Blasting the heat will burn your cakes (or crêpes). Once they’re cooked, keep them warm under a tea towel.
Step 4: While your pancakes cook, mix the cream cheese and remaining honey together. This is your sweet, cream cheese frosting.
Step 5: Serve your pancakes with a dollop of cream cheese frosting and a sprinkle of chocolate shavings. Then add a good drizzle of chocolate sauce over the stack. Enjoy!
More Pancake Tips from Gousto’s Senior Chef Jordan Moore:
Use a non-stick pan.
Add the mixture to a really hot frying pan.
Add a little more oil between cooking each pancake.
Use butter, coconut, or rapeseed oil for frying.
Spread the mixture out in the pan as quickly as possible.
Always add the liquid to the flour gradually, and keep whisking to avoid lumps.
When it comes to gluten-free flour, the best ones to use are rice, buckwheat, or coconut flour. For dairy alternatives for milk, you can use almond, rice, soya, or coconut milk.
If age-appropriate, adding protein like nuts and seeds to your pancake will help to maintain your blood sugar, keeping you fuller for longer.
December is well underway now and as we hurtle towards Christmas with not a lot else to do due to the lovely Coronavirus, we’re at home more than we’ve ever been before.
We’ve all had to get a little bit more creative at home to keep us going through this time. I’ve already lost count of how many Christmas films we’ve already watched, and the requests for hot chocolate are nearly daily. We’ve also had many a living room picnic, pizza and a movie and attempted a few board games (impossible with a two year old).
Back in November, Nanny brought over a goodie bag to make this S’mores recipe which sounded disgustingly sweet, gooey and chocolatey – perfect for yet another Christmas movie so I thought I would share it with you so you can try too.
What you will need:
A metal/oven proof dish
Skewers
200g Milk Chocolate
300g Marshmallows (the small ones work the best)
Strawberries
Pineapple chunks
Sweet breadsticks
Digestive biscuits
How to do it:
Pop the chocolate milk and 200g of the marshmallows in a pan and heat very gently until they’re all melted and smooth.
Pour into the oven-proof dish and top with the remaining marshmallows.
Pop under the grill and keep a close eye until the marshmallows turn a golden toasted colour.
Using the skewers with a selection of fruit and biscuits, scoop up the gooey yumminess and get stuck in.
Enjoy x
If you liked this S’Mores Dip Recipe and are looking for more Christmas Inspiration then head over to our ‘Everything Christmas’ Pinterest board where I’ve saved loads of stuff from decorating tips to Christmas recipes.
My kids love to have pancakes and are requested quite often, especially as a Birthday breakfast.
Here is the most simple Pancake batter recipe that I’ve been using for years which can’t really go wrong.
What you need:
100g Plain Flour
1 Egg (large)
300mls of Milk
Pinch of Salt
Butter for frying.
How to:
Crack the egg into a bowl and add milk and whisk. Gradually sift in the flour stirring as you go along. Add in a pinch of salt and mix.
I always at this point put the batter mixture in the fridge for about half an hour which I was told to do by my mum but not sure why.
Melt butter in a frying pan and put on hob until hot.
Depending on size of pan add just enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan.
Flip or use a flipper (fish slice) until golden on both sides.
To make a batch I have the oven on low and keep adding them to the oven until the whole batch is cooked and then serve.
Toppings
You can’t beat just sugar and lemon in my opinion but of course the possibilities are endless. Here are a few to get you going, but please feel free to add suggestions in the comments.
Maple Syrup
Golden Syrup
Peanut Butter
Jam
Cream of any sort
Chocolate Sauce
Ice cream
Nutella
Honey
Bananas
Strawberries
Raspberries
Blueberries
Cinnamon
If you fancy something more than the simple pancake batter recipe then make sure you have a look at our Pancake Kebab Recipe or why not give American Pancakes a go topped with Maple Syrup and Bacon.
For more Pancake Recipes and Breakfast ideas pop over to my Breakfast Recipes board on Pinterest.
*This post may contain affiliate links which means that I receive a small payment should you click the link and make a purchase at no extra cost to yourself.
Isabelle loves to get a bit crafty and Christmas gives you the perfect excuse. Both of these are really easy to make and can be done with the kids.
Chocolate Orange Christmas Puddings
I pinched this idea off a work colleague as I thought they looked really great and who doesn’t like a Chocolate Orange.
Here’s what you need:
Chocolate Oranges (as many for the number of people you want to make for)
A big bar of white chocolate for the topping. Again the amount will depend on how many you are making. We made 5 and used a large bar of milky bar
Either ready made holly cake toppers or red and green icing to make your own.
Cellophane wrapping/bags to put them in
Ribbon for tying
We unwrapped the chocolate oranges and put them in a bun tin so that they didn’t roll away.
If making the holly and berry toppers yourself, cut these out and set to the side for later.
Melt the white chocolate and put a spoonful on the top of the chocolate orange allowing it to drip down the sides.
Add the holly and berry toppers and put into the fridge until set.
Wrap in cellophane and tie with ribbon.
Perfect and simple to make.
Christmas Chocolate Block
I’ve seen these many times on pinterest so we decided to make our own version.
What you will need:
A square shaped tin lined with greaseproof paper. We lined ours with foil as we found the empty greaseproof paper box in the cupboard.
Lots and lots of chocolate – We opted for three large sized bars of Galaxy, one had rice crispy bits in and the two other were milk chocolate.
White chocolate for a bit of swirling on the top
Toppings – We opted for Cadbury’s Snow Balls, Maltezers reindeers, sprinkles, silver balls, pink sugar crystals and red edible flakey glittery type cake toppings
Melt the milk chocolate and pot into the tin making sure that it covers the bottom.
We then melted the white chocolate chocolate and swirled it through the milk chocolate.
Bash up the Chocolate snowballs and sprinkly willy nilly on top.
All other toppings just get added to the top – perfect for the kids to do.
Pop into the fridge and wait to set.
Once set you can break into pieces and add to a cellophane bag as a lovely chocolate gift, or you could do what we did and sit in front of the telly and scoff the lot!
Sticky Maple Pork Loin with Apples Recipe – I think this is going to be a firm family favourite meal since trying it. It only takes about 20 minutes to make and all the ingredients are store cupboard staples apart from the pork loins. Isabelle who has been fussing with her food recently even asked for a second helping!
What you will need:
500g Pack of Pork Loin boneless chops
1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
2 Apples cut into pieces
1 Garlic clove crushed
1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar
2 Tablespoons wholegrain mustard
2 Tablespoons Maple Syrup
How to make:
Trim all excess fat off the boneless pork loins and cut into bite sized pieces.
Heat the oil in a pan and add the pork, cooking for around five minutes.
Remove the meat from the pan and add in the apples and cook for around 5 minutes so these start to soften.
Add in the garlic, maple syrup and vinegar. Add in a few tablespoons of water at this point, pop the lid on your pan and cook for a few minutes to allow this to soften further.
Add the pork back in as well as the wholegrain mustard and cook further until the meat and apples take on a sticky glazed look and the pork is cooked through.
We served this with buttered new potatoes and broccoli which went down very well with all.
This got a huge thumbs up from Isabelle so will definitely be repeated.
If you like this Recipe then take a look at our Family Recipes Category for more inspiration.
Lisa x
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I think everyone gets bored of the usual breakfast offering of cereal, toast, fruit and yoghurt so I’ve been having a little search around for some great brekkie ideas which are quick but tasty.
What you will need:
Crusty White Loaf
Grated cheese (enough to top as many slices of bread you want to make)
Butter
Salt and Pepper (optional)
Eggs
How to do it:
Slice the bread into nice thickish slices.
Using a spoon or knife press the middle of the bread down to form a square that will hold the egg.
Season the bread to your liking (lots for Daddy).
Butter the non-flattened edges of the bread and add the grated cheese to the edges.
Season the top.
Bake in the oven at gas mark 5 for about 15 – 20 mins.
Breakfast is ready!!
Enjoy
Lisa
Ps – I have to confess that my earlier attempts at this were a major fail as I put them in the pan which resulted in the bottom of the bread burning and the egg not cooking so I flipped them over and this is what I got!
Nothing beats a chunky soup or stew on a cold day, especially if its cooking in the slow cooker which makes it zero effort.
What you will need:
Chorizo cut into small pieces (approx 7cm piece)
4 chicken breasts
400g tin green lentils
500g carton passata
2 garlic cloves crushed
2 good teaspoons smoked paprika
1 veg stock cube
Small teaspoon English Mustard
New potatoes and carrot chunks – as many as you can fit into your slow cooker/pan Salt and pepper
Fresh Parsley
If using a slow cooker, make sure that you put this on in the morning (just before school run is a good time). You can prepare everything the night before so that in the morning you can just pop it all in and leave all day long.
Cut the Chorizo into small chunks and add to slow cooker.
Cut the chicken breasts into large chunks (you can use skinless/boneless chicken thighs as well).
Add the lentils, passata, two cloves of garlic crushed, and two generous teaspoons of smoked paprika.
Add in a small teaspoon of English Mustard.
Peel approximately 4 carrots and cut into small batons.
Cut new potatoes into quarters (I find that 6yo Isabelle prefers quarters).
Once all of this is added to the slow cooker, add the vegetable stock cube and add water to fill the slow cooker.
Towards the end, add a generous amount of chopped fresh parsley, and if needed add a bit of flour to thicken it up. Add salt and pepper to taste.
We also like to add butterbeans, but unfortunately Isabelle isn’t a fan but I would usually have them.
This is a really tasty but filling family favourite and because it’s made in the slow cooker it’s perfect for busy family life. Ryan can grab a bowl full before going off to football training, Isabelle can eat as soon as she is hungry and we can eat when Isabelle is in bed in peace and quiet. That is if we’re not having it together as a family meal.
No excuse needed for making Pizza for dinner, but a Christmas Tree shaped Pizza is guaranteed to give you extra Mum points. To make these pizza’s you could cheat and use a ready made pizza base but we prefer to make our own. Here is the recipe for traditional dough base.
What you need:
3 cups of strong plain flour
1 cup of water
1 teaspoon of fast action dried yeast
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of olive oil
Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and cover. Leave for half an hour to give the yeast a chance to work.
Making the Pizza dough
After this time, divide the dough into 4 pieces and flatten with your hands. I then hand cut christmas tree shapes and put onto a greased baking tray.
Making Christmas Tree shapes
Using a jar of pizza sauce (can be found in most supermarkets) or use tomato puree mixed with some dried oregano.
Adding the sauce!
Then comes the fun bit of adding the toppings of your choice. I used a selction of peppers, sausage, chicken, salami, tomatoes and cheese. I let both of my kids decide what they wanted on their pizza. Put in the oven on gas mark 6 for approximately 20 minutes and they had them for dinner.
This is the first time that I’ve ever made anything sweet in my slow cooker, and we have definitely used it far more this year with lots of lovely soups, stews and casseroles.
So here goes!
What you need:
6 Cups of Milk
1 1/2 Cups Double Cream
1 Tin Sweetened Condensed Milk
12oz Milk Chocolate (chopped small of chocolate chips)
1 Teaspoon Vanilla
Marshmallows
Pop all of the ingredients into your slow cooker and set on a low heat for approximately two hours.
Stir every ten minutes or so and once ready top with a few marshmallows and serve.
This hot chocolate is not for the faint hearted. It is really sweet and choc0latey!!
We made this whilst we put up the Christmas Tree and decorations and then watched the Polar Express in preparation for our Polar Express Train Ride next Sunday.
