Tomorrow is one of my favourite days of the year. Shrove Tuesday. Or Fat Tuesday. Or Mardi Gras. Or the variation I like best, Pancake Day.
The idea was to use up all your eggs and fat before you started to fast for Lent. Although I tend to not do much on the fasting side, I do participate in the eating of the pancakes.
In all honesty, I look at pancakes as a transportation mechanism to get maple syrup into me. I do like some maple syrup. I have some already picked out and ready to pour on the first available pancake. But my love of maple syrup doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention to the pancake itself.
Many years ago, I found a quick pancake recipe and gave up on buying any sort of pancake mix. It’s just so easy to do. The ingredients are pretty simple. Flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, egg and a bit of oil or butter. And of course, something like milk.
I say something like milk, because a few years ago I gave up on using actual milk.
It started one day when all we had available was soy milk, so it went in the pancakes. The results were impressive. Some of the fluffiest pancakes I have every managed to produce. I have tried a couple other milkish type substances. Like almond milk. It also worked fairly well. I believe I happened to see a container of oat milk sitting in the refrigerator recently. I have no idea how one even goes about milking an oat, but this mysterious substance is headed for pancakes tomorrow.
Some will swear by buttermilk, saying the acidity of the buttermilk makes for a fluffier pancake. It does make a good pancake. But I don’t tend to find it in my fridge on a regular basis. However, there are members of my family who seem to enjoy the non-dairy milks. So they do tend to appear in my fridge. And I do have to say that the vanilla flavoured ones seem to work pretty good in a pancake. I haven’t tried any other flavours.
I also don’t put a lot of other things in the pancakes. I find it tends to take away from the taste of the maple syrup. Although a handful of chocolate chips or blueberries always seem to work well.
But it is a day I look forward to. Although, I can’t say I limit pancakes to just one day a year. I need something to soak up the maple syrup.