The Original Pancakes: Made in Belgium!

Once again we are extremely grateful to our fantastic creative cookery consultant Dominique De Roeck for providing us with this month’s recipe. Dominique writes:

It is almost February 2nd - Candlemas (you can read more about this festival in the article written by John Larsen in the and as the saying goes in Belgium “er is geen vrouwke zo arm, of ze maakt op Lichtmis haar panneke warm” roughly translated this means “there’s no women so poor that she won’t heat her pan on Candlemas” (note from the editor: strangely enough we don’t have this proverb in English. We probably should).

It is tradition in Belgium that we eat pancakes – crêpes on February the 2nd. We like to hold on to traditions in our family, especially where food is concerned.
Other traditional names for Candlemas include the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, the Meeting of the Lord and Candlemas is also sometimes called Hypapante (literally translated as 'Meeting' in Greek). So once again we have our Greek connection.
Candlemas marks the end of the Epiphany season, so after eating the pancakes we are officially getting ready for Easter.
You will also notice that our pancakes have less to do with the ones you find in the ‘Creperies’ in Crete.
My mother used to make pancakes when we were out of bread in the morning or in the evening. Milk, flour, eggs and sugar should always be available in a decent kitchen and in my experience all Belgians are born with the recipe in their genes (another note from the editor: my Belgian husband has never made me pancakes. Does that mean that he’s not really Belgian? After over 20 years of marriage, I think I should be told).
Now it’s time to share the recipe…..

Ingredients for about 15 Pancakes

The amount of pancakes you can bake with this amount of batter depends on the size of the pan. The ideal pan is about 20cm and has a low edge, so you can easily flip over the pancakes. Don’t panic because you don’t really have to flip them over and make them land on the floor, you can just turn them over with a spatula. You will need: 200 grammes self raising flour, ½ litre milk – whole milk, 1 small packet of vanilla sugar, 30 grammes of white granulated sugar,2 eggs and 50 grammes real butter.

How to Prepare the Pancakes

Sift the flour with the two kinds of sugar. Beat the eggs with milk. Make a hole in the flour/sugar and pour in the eggs/milk. Mix together with a whisk, make sure that there are no lumps left.
Melt the butter in the pancake pan, don’t let the butter become brown and stir the butter into the dough.
The baking can begin. Depending on how much batter you pour in to the pan the mix will become ‘pancakes’ or ‘crepes’ (crepes are very thin). The normal amount of batter for a 20 cm pan is a sauce-ladle per pancake.
Before you make each pancake you put a little butter in the pan and you make that the melted butter covers the whole surface of the pan. The minute the batter is not liquid anymore turn the pancake over and let the other side become slightly brown.
It takes about 2 minutes to bake one pancake, the ideal way is to use 2 pans at the same time.
Arrange the pancakes on a plate, one on top of the other and keep them warm in an oven at 80°C.
On the next page you can read about our favourite ways of eating the pancakes.

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