How to make Pancakes - Basic Recipe, Tips & Tricks

It’s Pancake Day on the 1^st March 2022 so I thought when better to share with you my basic pancake recipe and my top tips for making pancakes! After you’ve read this post you will have a recipe and all the tricks you need under your belt to make perfectly soft and thin pancakes that are still warm when served! So let’s get started with this post on how to make Pancakes!

The Basic Pancake Recipe

Panics are one of the easiest things to make, requiring only simple store-cupboard ingredients: flour, salt, milk, and eggs. If you have it, or are feeling fancy, you could replace some of the milk in this recipe with buttermilk for a richer flavour. It’s also nice to let the pancake batter stand and bubble up for half an hour or so if you have time, if not you can get straight into making them.

I don’t add any sugar to my basic pancake recipe, as the toppings in themselves make these pancakes devilishly sweet, and sometimes I prefer a savoury topping on my pancake as well. See below for some of my favourite sweet and savoury pancake toppings.

Basic Pancake Recipe

Ingredients (makes ~ 10 pancakes):

150g plain flour
Pinch of salt
3 medium eggs
450ml milk
A little margarine/butter/vegetable oil/sunflower oil, for frying
Toppings of your choice

Method:

Whisk all of the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl until there are no more lumps of flour. Then pour into a large measuring jug. Either leave the pancake batter to stand for half an hour, or get straight into the cooking.
Before starting the cooking process, prepare a large heatproof bowl filled with boiling water and set a plate on top. Get a piece of tinfoil ready, too. This is to keep the pancakes warm (see tips below).
In a large non-stick frying pan, gently heat a small amount of butter/margarine or vegetable/sunflower oil until hot.
Use the measuring jug to carefully pour some of the batter into the middle of the frying pan, then swirl the pan to evenly distribute the batter around the base of the pan.
Cook the pancake until the batter in the centre of the pancake is no longer liquid, then flip the pancake and cook on the other side for a minute until golden brown. Transfer the pancake to the plate you prepared earlier, set over the bowl of warm water and cover with tinfoil.
Repeat steps 4 and 5 with the remaining pancake batter (this recipe should make around 10 pancakes), adding a little more oil before cooking if you feel the pancakes are starting to stick. You won’t need to oil the pan between each pancake.
Serve the pancakes with your favourite toppings and enjoy!

Step-by-step guide for making my Easy Pancakes

pancake batter — Add all ingredients to a measuring jug.

Equipment you will need to make Perfect Pancakes

There are only a few things you need to make the perfect pancakes, and no, you do not need to invest in an expensive crêpe maker or frying pan. A simple frying pan you have at home will do, although you should make sure that it is non-stick! You will also need a whisk and bowl for making your batter, and I find that pouring the mix from a measuring jug into the pan is the easiest way to do it. Apart from that, a large fish slicer to flip your pancakes can be helpful, especially if you are not confident (or enough of a risk-taker) to flip your pancakes by tossing the pan! XD

When it comes to oil for cooking the pancakes, there are many different options as long as you use a flavourless oil, such as sunflower or vegetable oil. Olive oil is a no-go. I also like to use butter or baking spread at times, which are also vegetable-oil based, as I often have that in the fridge anyway.

Pancake Equipment — Equipment you will need

How can you keep your Pancakes warm for serving?

It’s really annoying if you are making pancakes and because you are only cooking one at a time, half of them are cold by the time you serve them! So here is my top tip for you to make sure your pancakes stay warm until you are ready to serve!

Placing the pancakes on a plate and covering them with tinfoil to stay warm is an excellent start, but I have an extra tip for providing an additional heat source to keep your pancakes warm! Simply fill a heat-proof bowl with some boiling water, and place the plate on top. That way the stream from the hot water will heat the plate from below, while the tinfoil you cover the plate with will keep the heat trapped in with the pancakes. I find this the ideal way to keep pancakes warm until I have cooked them all and am ready to eat, and you can even take the “contraption” through to the table with you so that the remaining pancakes stay warm while you are digging into the first ones. I’d highly recommend trying it!

A plate set over a bowl of boiling water.

My favourite Sweet and Savoury Pancake Toppings

As a child, sweet pancake toppings were of course the only way forward. I used to have my pancakes with ridiculous amounts of icing sugar and sprinkles covering them with at least a 1:10 ratio of pancake to sprinkles! XD Nowadays, I prefer drizzling over some honey and blueberries, or the classic of icing sugar and lemon juice. My sister’s favourite thing to do is to spread Nutella all over her pancakes and the scatter over some raspberries! But for a cinnamon addict like myself there is one topping I have held true to since childhood – cinnamon and caster sugar! I usually mix together 2 tbsp caster sugar with maybe 1-2 tsp of ground cinnamon, and mix that together to put over my pancakes. This is also a classic combo you will find if you buy a crêpe at a German or French Christmas market. “Je voudrais une crêpe au sucre canellee, s’il vous plaît” – yep, one of the most important things I had to learn before my school trip to a French Christmas market when I was 12 XD.

I do also quite fancy a savoury pancake, and have discovered two combinations I really enjoy: One being the classic of cheese and ham (with perhaps some soft cheese spread on beforehand), but perhaps more strangely red pesto and soft cheese. I don’t know what it is about that last combination, but my flatmate introduced me to it and it was SO good! Would highly recommend!

More Baking/Cooking Basics Posts

If you enjoyed this post, then you may want to check out some of my other cooking and baking posts, or my posts on how to master certain baking techniques, complete with step-by-step pictures and recipes!

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How to make Pancakes – Basic Recipe, Tips & Tricks