Pikelets

About the first thing I was ever allowed to make in the kitchen by myself were pikelets. These mini pancakes were a prerequisite in our family, almost a rite of passage. Visits to my Grandparents house on a Sunday afternoon always had pikelets on the menu, Granny was the master pikelet maker and my cousin and I were the master taste testers - unless banana bread was also on the menu, in which case I got the pikelets and B got the banana bread. I was happy with this deal ;0)

Pikelets in our family didn't actually come with a recipe attached, just a bit of this and a bit of that and a "you'll know when you've got the mix right" kind of statement that never really seemed to be that helpful when I was little. My preferred method these days is;

SR flour (about 200g or there abouts)

some caster sugar, depending on how sweet a tooth you have at the time but 20g is a good guess

1 egg, beaten

Enough milk to make the batter the perfect dropping consistency (that's pretty thick still)

Heat a frying pan and melt some butter so the pikelets don't stick. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the pan and wait for bubbles to start to appear on the top. When the bubbles pop and leave a hole in the mixture the pikelets are ready to turn over, they should take between a minute or two on each side - school girl errors taught me that bumping the temperature of the pan up didn't actually make them cook any quicker, although, on occasions, the smell of burning butter could raise the attention of a jumpy grown up frightened the house was about to be burnt down around them!

Best served warm with a nice dollop of butter oozing into them, or left to cool and then spread with butter and jam and made into a pikelet sandwich M&B style!