It's flipping Pancake Day! Duck!

Doesn't it seem as though there's always some food-related holiday happening?

Today, in the UK at least, it's Pancake Day, otherwise known as Shrove Tuesday, from the Middle English word meaning "to gorge on large quantities of carbs":

"For lyke the sowe that stoppe not to tayste,
He shrove the pan-queques inn hys fayce"
--Geoffrey Chaucer

Okay, maybe not. Wikipedia has the truth about Shrove Tuesday (the day after Collop Monday).

But this time-honored tradition may be on its way out, according to two recent stories from the British media.

A pancake race in Ripon, North Yorkshire, has been canceled because organizers were asked to provide insurance and employ medical staff in case of injury.

Really! How ridiculous is that? It's not as though anyone could get hurt ...



(Oh. Never mind.)

According to another report in the UK Guardian, fewer people are inspired to cook up a stack of pancakes:

One of the problems may be a lack of basic pancake-making skills. Only one in three people say they are "very confident" about what goes into pancake batter and only one in five say they are confident pancake flippers.

I'm starting to see a pattern here.

Why does the Ripon race need danger money? Fear of flipping.

What puts people off making their own? Fear of flipping.

People, don't be afraid! It's not as though you even need to flip. That's like setting food on fire; it's done for show.

Which reminds me: I'm thinking of making crêpes Suzette for dessert tonight.

What's the number for 911 again?

Breakfast: pancakes are a blast

I learned to make pancakes from my parents, who are both skilled in the art. Their pancakes are thin, delicate, golden, rimmed with a crispy, lacy edge, served rolled up and filled with something sweet and simple: lemon juice and sugar, treacle or jam. No need for anything more elaborate.

That, for me, was the pancake pinnacle. And then I moved to the US and discovered that pancake meant something different: thick, spongy, toast-colored Frisbees, served with a scoop of butter and a bucket of maple syrup. Sometimes they're studded with fruit. Sometimes they're stacked three inches high. Sometimes they're--gasp!--served with bacon and sausage.

Apparently, what I'd grown up calling pancakes were, according to US criteria, actually crêpes. See these here? Served at Gaslight in the South End. Just like what I grew up on.



I taught The Boy to make crêpes and he showed me the secret of the pancake (baking powder). He does both better than me because he shows no fear when it comes to frying stuff in butter.

We often have them for breakfast, because the batter is quick to make: a cup of flour, one egg, then the gradual addition of milk until the result has the consistency of heavy cream. And then we'll throw in nutmeg or orange zest or ginger. How easy is that?

But wait--it just! Got! Even! Easier!

Enter the Batter Blaster, which takes all the tedium and mess out of mixing three ingredients by blending them with cultured dextrose and xanthan gum (s'okay, it's organic) and presenting them in an easy-squeezy can--just point the nozzle at the griddle and you're ready to go!

Two things I love about the website: the video that shows the "old-fashioned" method of pancake creation, in which a fake-Fifties housewife throws up her hands in frustration at the tiresome, filthy ordeal (try cutting back on the pre-breakfast Rob Roys, dahling); and the painful grammatical error in the homepage blurb.

Sorry, Batter Blaster marketing team, I'm not telling you where it is. You have to find it yourselves.