Chox away! Susy Atkins pours some sweet matches for your special delivery
Fragrant pancakes, perfect with cream or ice cream. This makes about 250ml of batter, which in turn will make enough little pancakes – about 8cm across – to stack up three or four per person with the apple purée, perfect as a pudding. If you are making this for a filling breakfast, double the quantity of batter and the size of each
pancake.
Serves four INGREDIENTS
2 cooking apples (about
500g)
25g demerara sugar 3cm pared strip of
lemon zest Seeds from 5 cardamom
pods 100ml milk
1 large egg 100g self-raising flour
1 tbsp caster sugar 2 tbsp melted butter, plus
extra for frying Demerara sugar, whipped cream, crème fraîche or ice
cream, to serve
METHOD
Peel, core and roughly chop the apples. Put them in a small pan with the demerara sugar and the strip of lemon zest, plus two tablespoons of water. Cover and cook gently on the hob until
the apple is tender – depending what kind of cooking apple you have, it will have collapsed to a fluff or a sort of lumpy purée. Either is good. Crush the cardamom seeds in a pestle and mortar or the back of a spoon. With a hand
blender, mix the cardamom, milk and egg, then add the flour and caster sugar and blend again. Add the butter and give a final whizz. Melt a knob of butter in a large frying pan. Drop tablespoonfuls of mixture into the pan, spacing them well. Cook until bubbles show on the surface, then turn and cook on the other side. Keep warm in a low oven while you cook the rest of the mixture. Stack up the pancakes (three per person) with the apple purée in
between each, sprinkling each layer with demerara sugar. Serve with whipped cream or crème fraîche, or a scoop of ice cream.
“We work with a cooperative led by a man named Sar Toch and the brilliant American weaver Carol Cassidy of Lao Textiles (laotextiles.com) in a challenging province called Preah Vihear. Landmines are still being cleared there. The people there need support and have been through a lot, not least the genocide led by the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in the 1970s. The work of these artisans is exquisite, hand-dyed and hand-spun pure silk – expensive, and mostly made to order.”
Silk dressing gown, £1,200