American Pancakes

I woke up to find the sun shining on a fine, April Saturday morning. What better way to start the week-end than making pancakes, I thought? I had a punnet of fresh strawberries, some milk and eggs in the fridge and all the other ingredients in the cupboard, so it took me absolutely no time to whip up this lovely breakfast. This is a quick, foolproof recipe that I urge you to try whenever you have company at the week-end. I guarantee it won't fail to make an impression!

INGREDIENTS (it'll make about 12 pancakes, enough for three people)

• 140 gr. plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• A pinch of salt
• 10 gr. caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 250 ml semi-skimmed milk
• To serve: your choice of fruit (I used strawberries but blueberries, sliced banana, raspberries etc. are all delicious) and maple syrup (or if you prefer golden syrup, honey, jam or dare I say - Nutella!)

Wash and dry your fruit, chop it up as necessary (if you are using the banana you may want to wait until the last minute to do this as it'll go dark otherwise) and put it on the side. If the fruit was stored in the fridge, this will give you time to bring it to room temperature and allow you to better taste its flavour. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Now add the egg and milk to the dry ingredients and whisk them all together by hand, just for 30 seconds or so. You should end up a batter of the consistency of double cream.
Heat a non stick pan on moderate heat with no oil, and when hot drop two tablespoons of batter (dropping the second one on top of the first one) in the pan. You will see many little crates appearing on the surface of the pancake; when it's nearly completely covered by these, it's time to flip it over! It should only take 1 minute/1 minute and a half.
Do this by using a spatula and wait for a further minute to allow the other side to cook properly. Then take it out of the pan and move on to making the next one! If you switch your oven to about 125° C, you can keep the pancakes you have already made nice and warm while you are cooking the other ones.
When done, you can take the pancakes, fruit and maple syrup to the table for everyone to build their own stack. This is how it goes for me: pancake, then fruit, then maple syrup - at least three layers, four if the engineering plans have been laid out well. Orange juice or fresh filter coffee wash these down well.