A Whole New World

Fanny has an admission. It's not something which comes easily to her, but she is prepared to concede that she is not always right. Mostly, but not always. We've learnt at Fanny's side that pancakes must always be thin, they must always be delicate, they must always be made with Olive Oil and they must always be French. Of course, they must always be Fannys' recipe. Unless of course they are puffy, unless they are thick, unless they contain no Olive Oil and unless they come from the 'new world' as Fanny describes The United States. Fanny of course continues to refer to them in French as Crêpes Américaines, but also simply as Puffed Pancakes from the New World. I'm sure our friends in the U.S. would be so pumped.

For these puffy pleasures Fanny takes a whole new world approach and embraces a whole new technique. The ingredients are roughly the same though, eggs, single cream and flour. I was lucky to be sent a sample of Wrights Self Raising Flour this week, so it was put straight to good use here! Fanny adds egg yolks to her flour, and then mixes it all up to a thick batter with the cream. I wonder if I should've beaten the yolks into the cream first as it's hard to get the flecks of orange evenly distributed. Fanny doesn't say, she just gets to work.

Fanny whips up her egg whites ready to be added 'at the moment of making'. My trustee assistant Poor Sarah the KitchenAid has been languishing in the repair centre all week, but she made her way home just in time to set to whisking and a-whizzing for me. It's been so hard without her ready to leap into action at a moments click of the fingers. No wonder Fanny had a small army of endlessly hard working assistants scurrying away in her kitchen. It's been hard work this week all on my own!

Fanny suggests three ways to serve the finished puffy pancakes - all piled sky high, and all her own interpretation of what 'American' would be - first blasted with cinnamon and icing sugar, secondly inflated with chocolate chips in the batter, served with swollen raisins and maple syrup. Her third option is savoury - she makes a perfectly ordinary tomato sauce and smothers them in it and tops with bacon. That's not for me clearly. I'm not sure if Fanny ever went to America herself, but I love heading Stateside whenever I can. I always come back with bloated suitcases stuffed with 'candy' - I could practically open my own tacky high street store that we all secretly love. We'd love them more if they weren't so expensive I'm guessing. So I grab for some moreishly minty M&Ms which for some reason I have left untouched since my last trip! How did that happen?

Fanny adds hers into the batter and dollops them into a hot pan brushed lightly with olive oil. I knew it would make an appearance somewhere. As soon as they are 'set' she flips them over before piling up, drizzling with Maple Syrup, ready to be scoffed. The green M&Ms slowly seep and colour the batter in between each batch until the end ones are very verdant indeed. The chocolate melts and oozes out of the crisp shells to create a undeniably tasty pancake. They aren't as puffy as other 'American' style ones I've made, but these were Fanny's idea of a whole new world of pancakes. Compared to the slivers of French ones they are still light but airy, squidgy, and bursting with the M&Ms. Maybe minty pancakes aren't everyones cup of tea for breakfast though. I think they are right and I kind of like it when Fanny is 'wrong'...