Happy Saint Pancake! Saint Pancake? Indeed!

Sint Pannekoek is a Dutch pseudo holiday on the 29th of November. It was first introduced in 1986 in a Dutch comic called “Jan, Jans en de kinderen” (Jan, Jans and the kids). Grandpa and the kids didn’t feel like eating the veggies, so they made up a fake holiday called Saint Pancake, where the family bakes pancakes and put pancakes on their heads waiting for the father to come home and wishing him “a happy and blessed Saint Pancake”.

These can be eaten on any day of the year, obviously, but on Saint Pancake everybody should. Everyday is Saint Pancake, if you want it to be.

Ingredients

• 700 gr flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 L milk
• Pinch of salt
• Butter or oil
• Bacon and cheese, apple and cinnamon sugar, blueberries or another filling of your choosing

Sift 600 grams of flour into a bowl and add 750 ml milk and the eggs. Whisk until smooth, make sure there are no lumps. The batter is thick enough if you can see the lines of the whisk in the batter for just a second. If it’s too thick, add more milk and if it is too watery just add flour. Do this carefully and in tiny amounts, otherwise you will end up with a huge stack of pancakes (which we don’t mind).

Plain pancakes

Heat up your frying pan on high heat, as hot as you can. If you don’t use a non-stick pan, add a little oil or butter. Add a soup ladle of batter to the pan, swirl the pan to divide the batter evenly. If you prefer thinner pancakes like my hubby, add only 3/4 of a ladle of batter. Bake until the batter has slightly dried on top and air bubbles start to rise from the thickest part of the pancake (pic 2). Flip the pancake and bake the other side until golden brown, this should not take longer than the top side. Enjoy your pancakes with syrup, sugar or whatever you like.

If you are a little experienced and use multiple pans to speed up the process, make sure that they are both in a different stage of baking! You might wonder why there’s a huge pan of soup on the stove, but that’s actually boiling water. The plate on top is heated by the water and it keeps the pancakes nice and warm while you bake. Roll them up or stack them neatly, this way everyone can enjoy their dinner at the same time.

Bacon and/or cheese

Omnom bacon! Put the bacon into the frying pan until it doesn’t shrink anymore, then add a soup ladle of batter to the pan and swirl. Bake until the batter has slightly dried on top and air bubbles start to rise from the thickest part of the pancake. Flip the pancake and add three strips of cheese on top, when the cheese is melted, the pancake is done! Roll it up and add it to your pile of pancakes, so the cheese pancakes don’t stick together.

Apple

Peel, core and cut your apple into strips. Strips? Yes. thin enough to be no thicker than your pancakes, otherwise they will break. Add a soup ladle of batter to the pan and swirl. Add your apple strips and tiny bit of batter on top to seal them. Bake until the batter has slightly dried on top and air bubbles start to rise from the thickest part of the pancake. Flip the pancake and bake the other side until golden brown, this should not take longer than the top side. Enjoy your pancakes with syrup, sugar and cinnamon or plain.

Happy and blessed Saint Pancake!