Canadian Buttermilk Pancakes with Maple Syrup

I learnt at a relatively early age (Year 8) that breakfast was actually good for you. Well the main point(s) I retained from that Food Technology lesson was how breakfast can improve your concentration and attention spans (being the nerd that I was/am this was a good key point) and how it jumpstarts your metabolic activity for the day and you can get away with lower portion sized lunches and dinner (generally a good point for any girl).

Following on from the community spirit initiated by M (we had our first communal/family dinner on Thursday digging in to some Vietnamese spring rolls and apple pie) I decided that I'd share the baton and throw a Sunday pancake breakfast. And it goes without saying that the recipe would be Delia's.



Now I had made pancakes in the past, but being a city girl and you know how it is living in the city, with no time and many lots of big and little things to do...I had always 'cheated' and took the easy way out - i.e. use of premade pancake batter. So to make pancake from scratch is quite exciting for me.

Maybe I said that a little too early. For we (I being the main cook, SexyLady my sous chef maker of the accompanying creme fraiche and Ali the provider of sage cooking advice) found that cooking by and with me is a slightly anxiety-driven experience. E.g. my slight neuroticism drives me to try and follow a recipe to the word (hence it was a moderately stressful activity getting 450g of flour right using cups of 140.867g to make up for a non-existent weighty thing). It doesn't help that I always seem to skip half a sentence in each recipe and hence proceed to do something half right (thank you SexyLady for helping me out on this occassion!). Funnily enough, throughout my usual mildly adrenalin charged cooking exercise, I still manage to find it soothing and comforting (definitely when it comes to the eat & enjoy part).

Batter made, now the fun part - frying the pancakes! It is at this point that I get greatly amazed at the perfection of Delia's recipe. The pancakes rise as the bottom comes together taking on the appearance of movie-worthy pancakes (which should make flipping easier....however due to our ah lack of flipping competence my amazement turned to momentary despair when the first pancake went splat onto the floor come flipping time). Not to worry, the perfection of Delia's pancake recipe persisted and the proof is in the photos below:





Needless to say it was well received with the 2 leftover pancakes gobbled up by one-who-shall-remain-anon come lunch-time (his 4th rounds).

And the community spirit baton was quickly taken up by another. Spoilt by a vegan chocolate cake* for afternoon tea, courtesy of MissLovelyP.



*No animals were harmed in the making of this cake.