Saturday, June 27, 2009

Pikelets, Pancakes and Scones

The best ever recipes (because I say so!)

I love having a great recipe for something so that I need look no further. It is nice to know you have a tried and tested recipe that you can rely on. I have secured recipes for these that I think are the best (you may disagree- everyone is entitled to their own opinion...even it if it the wrong one; ha ha!)

So I offer to you-

THE BEST EVER SCONE RECIPE:

3 cups of self raising flour
3 tablespoons castor sugar (I use a little less)
80 grams butter
1 cup buttermilk

Oven- preheated to 220 degrees.

Rub butter into flour.
Stir in sugar.
Add buttermilk and mix minimally.
Roll out lightly and cut; baste with milk and cook 10-15 minutes.

(What is great about these is that they are yummy the next day. They are a denser scone and stay moist. Oh, and the raw mix tastes yummy too!)


THE BEST EVER PIKELET RECIPE:

1 cup self raising flour
pinch salt
2 tablespoons castor sugar (again I use a little less)
1/4 teaspoon bicarb soda
1/2 cup milk mixed with 1 teaspoon vinegar
1 dessertspoon melted butter
1 egg

Nb I often use about 2/3 white SRF and 1/3 wholemeal. It sucks up a bit more milk so add more as needed.

Sift flour, salt and bicarb.
Add sugar, egg and milk.
Beat with electric beater for 1 minute.
Increase speed for 2nd minute.
Fold in melted butter,
Cook in hot, greased pan. (I melt the butter in the frypan which means it is pregreased)

(These don't make a lot so if you are feeding hungry kids, double the recipe. While it may seem a pain to break out a beater for pikelets, it is well worth it. Oh, and the raw mixture? Yum!)


THE BEST EVER PANCAKE RECIPE:

2 cups plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup castor sugar (again cut some out if you want to)
1 egg
1 and 1/4 cup milk
3/4 cup buttermilk
75 gram melted butter

Dry ingredients into a large bowl.
Add wet ingredients and whisk till smooth.

(You will get a feel for how much this makes but I often double the recipe on Sunday morning for 2 adults, 2 kids and a toddler and then maybe Violet our Staffie might get some too. And you guessed it...yummy batter)

My hubby and I did a tour of Europe in an old Combie in 2001. The Aussie dollar was hideous back then and we had a pretty lean budget (meat? what's that?) Lunch was pretty much a baguette or sandwich with cheese of varying quality, maybe ham of varying quality and mayonnaise of varying quality. Our instant coffee was of uniformly bad quality (amazing what you can pick up at an Aldi. Even more amazing what you can put up with at the time. I'd probably implode if I had to drink that now)
But our breakkies were often fried dough. Too hard to cook pancakes on our little gas stove in the combi so we'd throw the whole mixture in, stir it around and chop it up into small pieces of dough. Served on a plastic plate, eaten with a plastic fork, accompanied by a really bad cup of coffee and enjoying the view from our parked Combi - a Norwegian glacier, a Swiss mountain,
a street in Barcelona... you get the idea. Wonderful times.
We'd joke that our poor kids would have to live through the fried dough tradition. A couple of months ago, I served up our Sunday pancakes as fried dough and what do you know! The kids loved it! (And much easier than cooking individual pancakes for 5)

1 comment:

Gilly said...

Im going to do these in the upcoming hollies for Mike and the kids...Mike is a mad piklet fan LOL