Pancakes with chocolate sauce

30 mins

35 mins

The mention of pancakes – or crêpes – always reminds me of the first dish I ever cooked, crêpes suzette. Carefully I cooked, folded and arranged the crêpes on a Pyrex dish. Next, I poured over the syrupy, orange sauce. Finally, as I carried the dish to the table where my family waited but … Crash! That Pyrex dish, which I’d overheated, shattered into thousands of pieces. My ego was crushed. As you know, this catastrophe didn’t put me off cooking, or making pancakes, and I urge you to try these crêpes, served with chocolate sauce.

Ingredients Required

For the chocolate sauce

2 tbsp(30ml): Whole milk

6 tbsp(90ml): Whipping cream

80g: Dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), chopped

For the pancakes

100g: Plain flour

2: Eggs, medium

1 pinch: Sea salt

1 pinch: Freshly ground black pepper

200ml: Whole milk

50g: Unsalted butter

Vegetable oil: for cooking the pancakes

To finish (optional)

1 tbsp: Icing sugar (or caster sugar), for dusting

1: Lemon, cut into wedges for squeezing over the pancakes

Cooking Method

Step 1

For the chocolate sauce In a medium saucepan, bring the milk and cream to the boil, then remove the pan from the heat and stir in the chopped chocolate. Continue to stir until melted and smooth. Serve in a jug alongside your pancakes. (If the sauce begins to solidify before serving, briefly microwave it.)

Step 2

For the pancakes Place a cloth under a large mixing bowl to make it more stable. Add the flour, make a well and crack in the 2 eggs. Season with the salt and pepper. Whisk the eggs, gradually incorporating the flour. Thin down with a little milk. This will ensure a smooth batter. Pour in the rest of the milk, little by little, whisking continuously. Now heat the butter in a small pan and when it foams pour it into the pancake batter, whisking all the time. (The butter will give flavour and help prevent the pancakes from sticking.) Keep the batter to one side. Have a spatula ready, as well as a tray on which to place the pancakes once cooked.

Step 3

Heat a frying pan (16 – 18cm diameter), or even better a crêpe pan, on a medium heat. Add about a teaspoon of oil to the pan and swirl it around. Before you begin to cook, please bear in mind that the oil must be hot enough to sear and cook the pancakes – too hot and they will burn; not hot enough and they’ll be beige. True, practise makes perfect … but this is fun to practise and soon you will be the finest crêpier (or crêpiere) in town! Add just enough pancake batter to the hot pan so that when swirled the batter covers the surface. Cook for 15 – 20 seconds. Slide the spatula underneath and flip the pancake. Cook for a further 15 – 20 seconds. Repeat until all the batter is used. Try to make them as thin as possible. The right thickness will give you 12 – 14 pancakes.

Step 4

To serve Serve still warm with a dusting of icing sugar and my homemade chocolate sauce, or simply with a sprinkling of caster sugar and lemon juice.