You can find pancake flour on the supermarket shelves which you just need to add water. I am not a fan of those but once in a while, out of curiousity, I do experiment with them. Still, they are way too dry and taste metallic (due to the bicarbonate of soda) to me. So, what I do is to mask the commercially prepared taste with something else.
The instructions on the box is to mix 1 cup of flour with 3/4 water. As simple as that.
What I added :
- 1 banana, sliced
- 1 large tablespoon of raisins (soak in a little hot water to plump it up a bit)
- 1 egg
- decent amount of butter or margerine
Mix the pancake batter according to instruction. Heat non-stick pan. Add in butter. Put in banana and raisin and let them caramelise a bit. Pour in batter and spread it over the pan. Knock in egg and break it up. Add more butter of the mixture is too dry. Gently mix them well but take care not to mush them too much so that you can still see the egg from the batter. When both sides are nicely brown, serve with peanut butter. Or add some honey if the pancake is not sweet enough.
PANCAKE STALLS
The first photo is my own creation but this second photo is one of the pancake sold by a hawker. Over here, there are only two stalls who sell this type of pancake. One of them is located at the old coffeeshop at the junction of Union Street and Downing Street. (next to Standard Chartered Bank). The other is the hawker at Jalan Macalister and Rangoon Road.
The stall owner probably use their own batter which is firmer and they use lots and lots of Planta margarine. The one sold by the woman at Union Street is a lot nicer. Do try them out if you have not eaten these sort of pancake before. It has lots of ripe, sweet banana, firm batter, egg, raisins and fried till crispy with lots of margarine. Good!
2 hands up for butter.
Margarine is bad for taste and health.
Pancakes…yum yum… my favaourite is probably still the traditional pancakes with maple syrup topped with vanilla ice cream though.
mmmm… my fav pancake at Macalister Road!!!
The original pancake stall at Union Street is own by my uncle, who then passed it on the the lady who is now running it. His son now opens the upscale pancake outlet at Gurney Plaza.
Looking at your pics of the pancakes brings back fond memories.
My father used to run the popular “Tuck’s Pancake” business many years ago during the late sixties right through the early eighties. It started from the Golden City Restaurant and the present KeK Seng Restaurant in Air Itam and then subsequently moved to Union street.
He retired fro the business in his seventies and passed the business on to its present owner.
My younger sibling is now operating the upscale version at the ChePanze in Gurney Plaza.
My father is in his nineties now,but he still makes the most scrumptious pancakes.A lot his ‘old ‘ customers can attest to that!