"Just 'cause you pour syrup on something doesn't make it pancakes." - Samuel L. Jackson

Today is pancake day, or pancake Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday. Originally this was a religious day so people could use up all the eggs, sugar or other foods for the beginning of Lent. Somewhere along the line, it was just adopted by everyone and the people who give up things for lent will chose something like alcohol or chocolate or crisps etc. this blog won’t be a history lesson, because actually, the only thing I know about pancake day, I’ve mentioned above. No, I have chosen this blog to show what I mean, by pancakes and why I go around commenting on other people’s pictures as a sort of troll (all done in Jest).

Being British, I was brought up on the British normal pancake recipe. The ones that you cover in sugar and some people have lemon on them. for most Brits, these are pancakes. HOWEVER, they’re wrong. That “pancake” is nothing more than a crepe and I will prove it.

From a google search, the recipe for ‘British Pancakes’ is;

Flour

Milk
Eggs

Sugar &/or lemon to top

Oil to cook in

That’s it. That is the simple recipe, make with the correct amounts of ingredients, and pan fried, will give a thin, sometimes crispy (depending on how long you cook), ‘pancake’ that most British people will have to peel of the ceiling or floor as it is customary to toss, or flip the pancake in the pan. As demonstrated in the gif (I hope it will be animated as I’ve never tried to include a gif … if it fails then I have failed as a blogger and will never forgive myself. Here goes nothing, the pancake flip gif is here …

Now back to the point at hand. That recipe is THE SAME recipe as a simple crepe recipe. Both from the BBC Good Foods website, the SAME ingredients (just in different quantities) and practically the same cooking method. So how can 2 recipes with the same ingredients be called something different? Custard also has a similar recipe so is custard also a pancake?

NO.

Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that what most British people call pancakes, are simply crepes. 

REAL pancakes are the ones served in most restaurants including McDonald’s and come from an American recipe. Now there are 2 ways to do these pancakes. Some require buttermilk whilst others just require baking powder. A simple recipe I found includes;

Self-Rising Flour

Baking Powder

Sugar

Eggs

Butter

Milk

Totally new ingredients that makes the batter more viscous and actually rises … hence the cake part of pancake. THESE are real pancakes. The others are crepes.

Now, looking around a supermarket, their idea of pancakes and pancake day and crepes changes depending on which aisle you go down. I passed a pack of ‘sweet pancakes’ that were actually crepes and yet the item they called crepes were the exact same thing but rolled up with chocolate in them. So they’re mixing things up themselves. As you can see below, (I did cover over the brand but the brand and shop savvy of you will actually know where they’re from, but eh).

Now to make things even worse, when you look at the promotion end for pancake day, the one where they sell the pancake pans and the special ones that you buy as they have a unicorn design, use once and then shove to the back of the cupboard, have a picture of pancakes on them, but they’re the REAL pancakes. So one aisle it says crepes are pancakes, another aisle it says crepes are rolled up pancakes, and another aisle shows actual pancakes. 

It’s enough to drive people MAD. 

OR, as I suspect … nobody actually gives a fuck and they just eat whatever they want. Which is a good way to be. However, I decided to write this blog to inform people of the differences, and to hope that If you enjoy some nice tasty pancakes on Pancake Tuesday (before the queen’s pancake speech of course) ... I hope that what you are enjoying are actually pancakes … and not crepes.

So now you know … and knowing is half the battle. Or so 80’s cartoons told me. 

Anyways, what do you like to top your pancakes with?

What do you like to top your crepes with?

Did you flip your pancakes off?

Are you a pancake tosser?

Let me know in the comments below and thank you for reading.