it's Pancake Tuesday!

The day before Lent begins means a stack of pancakes for lunch and more after dinner. Or that was how it was when I was a child.

I would come home from school for lunch and Mum would have made a big stack of pancakes, frying-pan sized, made from freshly-mixed homemade batter. Simple: flour, eggs, milk, beaten until smooth then poured into a frying pan spoonful by spoonful.

The first one was always less than average. The frying pan was never hot enough, and the skill of pouring just exactly enough batter to make a thin pancake forgotten since last year. The second one was always better.

A perfect pancake was extra-thin, it filled the whole frying pan and it was cooked just long enough to give it dark brown grooves of caramelised loveliness on each side.

There was no messing about with exotic toppings in our house. This was a pre-Lent ritual, designed to get all the flour, eggs, sugar and butter used up before the fasting began. Each pancake would be spread with butter, sprinkled with a liberal amount of sugar and finished off with a good squirt of lemon juice. The three toppings would mingle into a sweet-and-sour liquid of perfect viscosity.

Mum always stacked the pancakes one by one, topped individually as described above, then when the whole stack was done she would slice them into wedges like a cake. Personally I always preferred to eat my pancakes whole, rolled up, with butter, sugar and lemon juice added fresh each time. This is how I do it myself when I make pancakes in my own house.

Anybody else doing Pancake Tuesday? Anybody got any other family rituals you want to share?

Mummum's fairy cakes

My mum's recipe is really easy to remember and to increase or decrease according to how many you want. You can make them with just raisins in, or make them without raisins and decorate them with cream or jam and coconut or whatever you want.

Ingredients
Raisins 125g (optional)
Butter 125g
Caster sugar 125g
Self raising flour 125g
2 eggs beaten
1 teasp vanilla extract
2 tbsp milk

Method
Pre-heat oven to 190˚C

Beat butter and sugar till fluffy

Add egg a little at a time, whisking as you go

Add raisins (optional)

Beat in the vanilla

Stir in half the flour

Add milk and the rest of the flour

Fold until well combined

Spoon into cups and bake 10-12 minutes or until golden on top

Cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack

proper Irish scones

My mother makes the best scones on earth. When I was in university I lived at home, and I used to leave early on Thursdays to get home in time for the scones to be taken out of the oven. They are best eaten slightly warm with as much butter as your heart can handle. Not butter substitute, REAL butter.


Ingredients
2 oz butter
1lb self-raising flour
4 oz caster sugar
4 oz sultanas
½ pint fresh milk
Beaten egg to glaze

Method
Rub four, sugar and butter together

Rub in sultanas

Bind with milk

Knead and roll to 3/4 inch thick

Cut into scones with a glass and glaze with the beaten egg

Bake 20-25 minutes at 200˚C

Cool on a wire rack

Mummum's tea brack

Mummum's tea brack is one of my mother's specialities. She is a plain cook but a wonderful baker. This traditional Irish cake is not too sweet and - unsurprisingly - uses tea to moisten it. It would often be served sliced like bread and buttered.


1 lb of sultanas or raisins
1 cup of cold tea
1 egg
3/4 lb flour


1. Steep fruit in tea for at least one hour (preferably overnight).

2. Add egg and swirl around.

3. Sieve in flour and mix well.

4. Pour into 9 inch square tin.

5. Put in oven in middle shelf at Gas Mark 4 for 45 minutes.

6. Cover with tin foil and cook for a further 45 minutes and Gas Mark 3.

7. Test with a knife to make sure centre is cooked.