Chocolate and Banana Swirled Pancakes

It’s Pancake Day again. Or Shrove Tuesday to give it its proper name.

It’s quite late this year, I usually always think of Pancake Day as being around the time of the Brits and that has been and gone this year.

This year Joseph Joseph sent me a couple of their gadgets to use when whipping up my pancakes. 

Whipping is quite accurate as I received a Whiskie – a two in one balloon whisk which has a silicone blade fitted meaning you can scrape your bowl thoroughly too. (Around £10 from the Joseph Joseph site)

I don’t know about you, and it’s probably just my OCD, but when I watch cooks and chefs on TV pouring their food from a bowl and leaving half the contents in there, it really winds me up! But the Whiskie means that nothing should be left in the bowl. (£15 from the Joseph Joseph site)

I was also sent the Shake-It self tapping sieve. It’s a regular sieve except the handle has a clever sleeve over it, which you use to shake and tap at the same time with one hand – ingenious.

My pancakes this year are a combination of deep cocoa flavoured batter and a banana infused batter swirled about. They are delicious on their own as chocolate or banana, but the two go so well together I thought swirling them up would be good fun.

Tip: I used frozen bananas for my banana batter. Once defrosted and slipped out of their skins, they are the perfect consistency for mushing into the batter.

Once I’d made the batters separately, I used disposable piping bags to dollop them onto my pre-heated skillet. First I spooned chocolate and banana batter into the same bag and got a marbled effect when I ‘piped’ it on to the cooking surface. Unfortunately, when fully cooked, although they tasted good, the distinctive colours of batter sort of melded together.

Next I went for putting the batters in separate bags and tried piping half and half for a two tone effect and also going for a Jackson Pollock sort of effect. This involved piping one colour of batter onto the skillet and then piping the other batter on top in a random fashion, this seemed to look the most effective and probably be the one kids would like most.

I served mine with some chopped bananas, chocolate chips (add a handful of these to the batter too, if you like) and some maple syrup.

These are so easy (and fun) to make. Here is the recipe:

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Chocolate and Banana Swirled Pancakes

by S Vettese February-27-2017

Chocolate and banana pancake batters swirled together

Ingredients

• 200 grams self-raising flour
• 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
• Pinch of salt
• 70 grams granulated sugar
• 2 medium eggs
• 500 ml milk (I used soya)
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 frozen bananas defrosted

Instructions

Make the banana batter by whisking together the defrosted, mushy bananas with 1 egg, 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil, and 250 ml of milk.In a separate bowl, sift together 100 grams of flour, 1 tablespoon of the sugar and a pinch of salt. Add the wet banana mix and stir to combine. Don’t overmix, lumps are fine in pancake batter.In another bowl, sift together 100 grams flour, the cocoa powder, the remaining sugar and salt. Add the remaining egg, oil and milk and beat to combine.Preheat a frying pan or skillet over medium heat and grease very lightly with some vegetable oil.Add the two batters by spooning or piping, into whatever pattern you opt for.Cook until bubbles start to appear on top of the wet batter then with a turner, flip the pancakes over for a couple of minutes on the other side. Don’t be tempted to push down the pancakes with the turner, you want the puffiness!Place on a plate and drizzle with maple syrup, some bananas, cream, whatever takes your fancy.Enjoy!

Details

Prep time: 15 mins Cook time: 15 mins Total time: >30 mins Yield:20 pancakes approx.