Apparently some people call Scotch pancakes drop scones instead. It's a strange world and takes all sorts, or so I'm reliably informed.
That aside, I decided to make some from scratch for breakfast a couple of weeks back, to go with the maple cured bacon and maple syrup we already had. We always used to just buy a packet of Scotch pancakes and stick them in the toaster, but we didn't have any in and that small problem wasn't going to stand in the way of my breakfast.
The recipe's really ludicrously simple, though the wife seems to have hidden the Hugh Fearnley-Doodah book I used at the time. Luckily, I found
his recipe online here and I think it's about the same as the one I used from the book. What confuses me though is the one from the book made about 30 scones so I halved the quantities, whereas this online version says it makes 12, but looks like the version that I read before halving, so use your own judgement 🙂 One thing I found is that weighing out really small quantities accurately is quite tricky with analog scales, but it didn't seem to cause a problem.
It's really very quick and easy to make the batter, the critical thing being the liquidity. I must have got it right, because they spread out nicely to just the right thickness on the hot frying pan and looked like the real deal. I found with a non-stick pan they were really trouble free when flipping, not requiring careful extra oiling as Hugh suggested. I was able to do four at a time, and stacked them up when done, but I failed to keep them warm enough whilst then frying the bacon (I wanted to use that same pan) so the butter didn't melt on them as well as I'd have liked. Next time I'll probably keep them under foil and maybe give them a quick zap in the microwave just the steam them up a bit before bringing to the table.
Finally – and frankly this was a touch of genius-like inspiration – I served with lime wedges. The lime juice cuts through the sweet maple syrup to take it to another level of breakfast heaven! Look at that picture and imagine the pancakes buttered and real Canadian maple syrup drizzled all over..
