Sunday breakfast: bar, cappuccino croissant, tarts and biscuits. Here in Italy we are truly spoiled for choice and we have exported our way of having breakfast all over the world… However, why stop within our borders? Why not borrow some foreign tradition, stolen from great America, for our Sunday breakfast?
Anyone who has tasted a pancake in their life will have a sweet memory in their heart. And here are some suggestions for making them again as a family, to start a nice sunny Sunday on a sweet note…
Ingredients (serves 2 people, approximately 6 pancakes)
- 120 g 00 flour
- 3 tablespoons of icing sugar
- 150 ml of milk
- 6 g of baking powder
- 1 whole egg
- butter to grease the griddle/pan
Warm up a little milk in a saucepan and dissolve the yeast, stirring gently (alternatively you can also add the yeast directly to the dough together with the flour). In a large enough bowl, combine the warmed milk with the rest of the milk, the sugar and the egg and beat with a fork, avoiding lumps forming. Add the sifted flour a little at a time until the mixture is dense but still liquid. Let it rest for 10-15 minutes so the yeast will activate (you will see some bubbles).
Grease a fairly large pan or crepe plate with butter (use a paper towel to grease it well) and heat it on the stove. At this point, keeping the heat low, slowly pour a little of the mixture into the center until it forms a disc with a diameter of about 10 cm. Wait for the pancake to bubble a little (it’s the yeast) and when the crust has formed, remove it with a wooden (or silicone) spatula and turn it over. Be careful not to burn them, they must be brown on both sides, but don’t overdo it!
Repeat the operations for the other pancakes.
Serve the pancakes with jam, chocolate cream, sugar and lemon, maple syrup…
IDEAS AND SEASONINGS:
Sugar and Caramelized Lemon: Place a little granulated sugar on top of the cooked pancake, add a little lemon juice and return to the heat to melt (caramelize) the sugar a little. They are super super good!
White Chocolate: grate a little white chocolate into the dough and you will have pancakes with a very delicate flavor (optional but good: also add a little lemon zest to the dough)
Banana: a classic of Asian cuisine, the banana pancake… Proceed as usual and add a few slices of banana to the still uncooked half of the pancake before turning it over: this way the bananas will brown slightly together with the pancake being cooked. Unbeatable if accompanied by chocolate or Nutella.
Chocolate ripple: keep a few spoonfuls of mixture aside and mix it with Nutella or a chocolate cream (in the ones in the photo I added a dark chocolate cream). Mix well and obtain a nice dark and fairly soft mixture, more or less the same consistency as the basic mixture. With a teaspoon, drop some drops of chocolate mixture and “draw” a heart, a star, whatever you like, on the pan. cook for a little while (it should barely cook, so as not to mix with the mixture that is poured later) and pour a ladle of light mixture over it and cover the design. Flip as per procedure and you will have your variegated chocolate pancakes!
n.b. for the more experienced you can use a piping bag or a syringe to make more precise drawings on the pan (you can also use food coloring and create real works of art!).
