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Paper-based course on how to make pancakes.
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PANCAKES
Bachelor’s survival skills: Cooking
Bachelor’s survival skills – Cooking - Pancakes
Technical and Vocational Teachers’ College
2
Subject: Bachelor’s survival skills Module: Cooking Topic: Making pancakes First release: August 2010 Author: Eric Kluijfhout, to be contacted at [email protected] Copyright: This material is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ In plain language: you can use, adapt and (re-) distribute this work freely for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, AS LONG as you mention the author(s) and release the materials under the same license.
Bachelor’s survival skills – Cooking - Pancakes
Technical and Vocational Teachers’ College
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Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 4 History ..................................................................................................................................................... 4 Cooking utensils and ingredients ............................................................................................................ 5
Cooking utensils ................................................................................................................................ 5 Ingredients ......................................................................................................................................... 6
Preparing pancakes ................................................................................................................................. 7 Basic recipe ....................................................................................................................................... 7 Preparing the batter .......................................................................................................................... 7 Start baking ........................................................................................................................................ 9
Nutritional value .................................................................................................................................... 11 Food groups .................................................................................................................................... 11 Calories ............................................................................................................................................ 11 How many can we eat? ................................................................................................................. 11 Beware of those goodies! .............................................................................................................. 11
Dare to experiment! .............................................................................................................................. 13 Pancakes with a filling .................................................................................................................... 13
Vegetable fillings ........................................................................................................................... 13 Fruit pancakes ............................................................................................................................... 13 Meat pancakes .............................................................................................................................. 14
Toppings .......................................................................................................................................... 14 Assignments .......................................................................................................................................... 15
Assignment 1: Bake your own pancakes. ................................................................................... 15 Assignment 2: How many pancakes? ......................................................................................... 15
Procedure ...................................................................................................................................... 15 Do it! .............................................................................................................................................. 16 Feedback........................................................................................................................................ 16
Assignment 3: Throw a pancake party! ....................................................................................... 17
Bachelor’s survival skills – Cooking - Pancakes
Technical and Vocational Teachers’ College
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Introduction
In this unit you will learn how to prepare your own pancakes. Difficult? Not at all! The basic
pancake only requires three ingredients, and just the most basic cooking utensils to prepare.
Moreover, you can have pancakes as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You want to treat and
impress friends? Go over the top and serve them pancakes with Italian-style filling, meat, or
seafood. And for this one very special person? Try a topping of ice cream, fresh fruits and
cream with chocolate sauce! In other words: preparing pancakes is one of the prime bachelor's
life skills!
History
Pancakes have been enjoyed the world over since ancient times. According to the internet
encyclopaedia Wikipedia “Archaeological evidence suggests that varieties of pancakes are
probably the earliest and most widespread types of cereal food eaten in prehistoric societies
whereby dry carbohydrate-rich seed flours mixed with the available protein-rich liquids,
usually milk and eggs, were baked on hot stones or in shallow earthenware pots over an open
fire to form a nutritious and highly palatable foodstuff.”1 Our love for pancakes is in our genes
so to say.
1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancake
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Cooking utensils and ingredients
Cooking utensils
You can make pancakes with a minimal set of cooking utensils: a bowl, something to stir with
and a flat pan. And of course some sort of a stove.
However, the 'professional' will use the following:
A scale, to measure the correct amount of flour
A measuring beaker, for the right amount of milk
A bowl, in which to mix the ingredients
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A whisk for stirring the ingredients into a batter
A flat-bottomed frying pan, preferably with low sides
In case you have no scale and/or beaker, you may use cups for measuring. For the basic
pancake recipe the quantities are quite easy: 1 cup of flour to 1 cup of milk and 1 egg. And
don't forget to add a little salt.
Ingredients
The basic pancake that you will learn to prepare contains just flour, milk, eggs, a pinch of salt
and some butter or oil for baking. For North-American style breakfast pancakes you may add
a bit of baking powder and sugar to the batter make your pancakes more fluffy and sweeter.
Flour Milk Eggs butter + salt
Is this basic pancake too plain for you? Then add a special filling or topping. For a light
breakfast a sprinkle of sugar will probably do just fine. You need something more substantial?
Mix sliced vegetables, pieces of ham or bacon, or fruit slices through the batter. Almost
anything goes. Toppings for those with a sweet tooth? Try syrup, chocolate sauce, or ice
cream. More health-conscious? Decorate your pancake with fresh fruits like banana, mango,
or any other fruit you may fancy.
Bachelor’s survival skills – Cooking - Pancakes
Technical and Vocational Teachers’ College
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Preparing pancakes
Basic recipe
This is the recipe we use throughout this module to explain and demonstrate how to make
pancakes.
The following ingredients should get you enough batter to make about eight pancakes in a 20
cm pan:
200 grams of flour (1 ¾ cup)
2 eggs
½ liter of milk (2 cups)
sprinkle of salt
some butter for baking
Preparing the batter
A good pancake starts with a good batter. In the instructions below on how to make the
perfect batter we use the standard pancake recipe that we presented elsewhere.
One of the most common mistakes is to just dump all the ingredients in a bowl, and start
mixing them together. This will result in a lumpy batter, and this is not what we want1!
The proper way to make a good batter is as follows:
Step 1. Make sure you have all the ingredients ready, in the right
quantities.
Step 2. Put all of the flour in the bowl, and make a small hollow
in the middle.
Bachelor’s survival skills – Cooking - Pancakes
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Step 3. Add some salt.
Step 4. Gently pour in little
measures of milk at a
time in the hollow while
stirring. By the time you
have added about half of
the milk, all flour should
be absorbed into the
batter.
Step 5. Now keep stirring till you have a smooth, sticky batter
without any lumps. At this time you should still be left
with half of the milk and all the eggs!
Step 6. Break the eggs and mix them through the batter.
Step 7. Add the rest of the milk little by little while you keep
stirring.
Step 8. Keep stirring till you have a smooth batter. By hand, this
should take you some three minutes.
Bachelor’s survival skills – Cooking - Pancakes
Technical and Vocational Teachers’ College
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Done! Now leave the batter for some 20 minutes before you start baking. This is a good time
to clean up and prepare any fillings for your pancakes.
1Making a batter for the North-American style breakfast pancake for which you use baking powder, is a totally
different story. Here the ideal batter should still contain lumps, otherwise the pancakes will get tough.
Start baking
Batter prepared? Frying pan ready on the stove? Butter or oil at hand? Then you are ready to
start baking your pancakes!
Step 1. Make sure your pan is really hot.
Step 2. Add a teaspoon of butter or
oil to the pan, and make
sure it spreads evenly over
the bottom. When you use
butter it should really sizzle,
otherwise your pan is not
yet hot enough!
Step 3. Add just enough batter to
cover the pan with a thin
layer of it. You may have
to wiggle or rotate the pan
somewhat to spread the
batter evenly.
Step 4. Keep the pan on the fire till
you see the top of the batter
starting to get solid. Now
add a little butter or oil to
the top of the pancake, in
the middle.
Bachelor’s survival skills – Cooking - Pancakes
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Step 5. Once the top is completely
solid, turn the pancake with
a scoop. Or for the more
adventurous: try to flip it
by tossing it into the air!
The butter or oil you added
to the top in the previous
step will now prevent it
from sticking to the pan.
Step 6. Now and then check the bottom of the pancake with the
scoop to check whether it is getting ready. Nicely light
brown on both sides? Congratulations, you just baked the
perfect pancake!
Step 8. Put your pancake on a somewhat pre-heated plate and
continue with the rest till you finish your batter.
Enjoy!
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Nutritional value
Food groups
To stay healthy, our daily meals need a variety of ingredients from five food groups: grains,
vegetables, fruits, dairy products, and meat/beans. Your basic pancake is made of flour, milk
and eggs, and thus already caters for three out of the five food groups! Add fruits to your
breakfast-pancake and mix sliced vegetable with the batter for your supper-pancake, and in
principle you have covered all five food groups!
Calories
Next to variety, of course also the amount of food we eat matters to our health: not too little,
and surely not too much! But how much is enough? On average women need a daily caloric
intake of around 2000 Calories1, and men about 2800 Calories. For those of us with a
sedentary life-style this may be somewhat lower. But when you are doing hard physical
labour all day, you may require almost double.
How many can we eat?
So, how many pancakes does this add up to? Of course this also depends on your filling
and/or topping, but let's start with our basic pancake. A little arithmetic. For about 8 pancakes
we need:
200 grams of flour. With 340 Calories per 100 grams of flour, this equals 680
Calories.
2 eggs. With about 60 Calories per egg, this equals 120 Calories.
½ liter of full cream milk. With 67 Calories per 100 ml, this equals 335 Calories
This totals 1135 Calories. As this amount of batter should allow us to make 8 pancakes, this
leads to 1135 : 8 = 142 Calories for a single plain pancake. So if we were interested in caloric
intake only, the average women could eat up to 2000 : 142 = 14 pancakes a day, and men
almost 20 pancakes a day! In contrast to popular belief, this makes pancakes a fairly low-
calorie dish.
Beware of those goodies!
Once you start adding fillings and toppings to your pancakes however, things start to change
rapidly! Adding some sliced vegetables to the batter is still a good strategy. Your average
vegetable pancake, which also tends to be somewhat thicker and thus requires more batter,
may still contain less than 200 Calories. A banana and apple pancake? Count on 200 Calories.
Adding some butter and a spoon of sugar as a topping? Well beyond 200 Calories. Adding
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four slices of bacon? You are now in the 300 Calories range. And what about that 'very
special friend pancake' with two scoops of ice cream, whipped cream and a liberal serving of
real chocolate sauce? Start counting at 700 Calories!
1Beware: 1 Cal = 1 kcal = 1000 cal
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Dare to experiment!
Pancakes with a filling
When preparing pancakes with a vegetable, fruit or meat filling It may be a good idea to use
just slightly more batter than for a 'plain' pancake. This is to make sure the whole thing sticks
together and doesn't come apart when you turn it! The 'flip in the air' trick may prove
especially useful in this case. But make sure no part of the pancake sticks to the pan before
you try this – you do not want half of your pancake rotating in the air, with the other half
stuck to the pan!
Vegetable fillings
Cut the vegetables of your liking in thin slices. For certain vegetables it may be a good idea to
first cook the slices briefly – but make sure they do not become too well cooked/soft. Mix
them through the batter, or add them at the same moment that you poor the batter into the pan.
Fruit pancakes
This will work best with fairly firm fruits, like apples, pears, papayas, mangos, bananas etc.
Cut in thin slices and mix through the batter, or add at the same moment that you pour the
batter into the pan.
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Meat pancakes
Use sliced meat – ham, bacon – or even sliced sausages. Add the pieces of meat to the pan,
and then poor the batter over them.
Toppings
Toppings may vary from simply some sugar, to fresh fruits to ice cream – or all of them!
Bachelor’s survival skills – Cooking - Pancakes
Technical and Vocational Teachers’ College
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Assignments
Assignment 1: Bake your own pancakes.
Use the basic recipe presented elsewhere in this module to bake your own pancakes. Be sure
you have studied the sections on how to make a good batter and how to bake. Then go ahead!
Use the checklist below in case your pancakes are not what you expected them to be …..
# Problem Reason and possible solutions
1 Pancake sticks to the pan This is not uncommon for the first pancake, and is due to
the fact that the pan has to 'settle'. Scrape any remaining
pancake parts from the bottom, and add oil or butter. If the
problem persists, possible reasons could be:
1. The bottom of our pan is scratched/damaged – use
a pan with a smooth bottom.
2. You did not apply enough oil/butter – especially
with the first few pancakes you bake, don't be too
sparing.
3. Your batter is too 'thin' – the amount of milk is too
high in comparison to the amount of flour.
2 Pancake starts smoking while the
top is still fluid
You used too much batter – poor just enough into the pan
so that it just covers the bottom with a thin layer.
3 Pancake takes long to finish, and
is leathery
The pan is not hot enough – turn up the fire
4 Pancake falls apart and is rather
light-coloured
The pancakes is not well-baked – turn up the fire.
Assignment 2: How many pancakes?
Compute how many pancakes you have to eat a day to meet your personal caloric needs. First
read the 'Procedure' section below, then carry out the exercise, and finally check the feedback
Procedure
Your caloric needs can be computed with the Harris Benedict equation. This is a calorie
formula using the factors of height, weight, age, and sex to determine your Basal Metabolic
Rate (BMR) – the amount of calories your body needs per day while resting.
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The formula to compute your BMR is:
For men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 X weight in kg) + (5 X hight in cm) - (6.8 X age in years)
For women: BMR = 655 + (9.6 X weight in kg) + (1.8 X hight in cm) - (4.7 X age in
years)
As usually you are not resting the whole day, your BMR has to be corrected for the type of
activities you perform during the day to calculate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure
(TDEE). You can calculate your TDEE by multiplying your BMR by your activity multiplier
from the chart below:
Your lifestyle Meaning Multiplier
Sedentary little or no exercise, desk job 1.2
Lightly active light exercise/sports 1-3 days/wk 1.375
Moderately active moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/wk 1.55
Very active hard exercise/sports 6-7 days/wk 1.725
Extremely active daily exercise/sports & physical job or 2X day training, i.e
marathon, contest etc.
1.9
Do it!
1. Using the above procedure, compute your BMR: ……………
2. Compute your TDEE: ...................
3. Now check the section on 'Nutritional value' of pancakes for the number of calories
contained by one basic pancake. What does this tell you about the number of pancakes
you have to eat a day to meet your TDEE? ……………
4. Check your answer against the feedback section below
Feedback
For men the outcome should be somewhere between 11 pancakes per day (when you are
short, light-weight, older, and have a sedentary lifestyle) and 24 pancakes per day (when you
are tall, heavy, young, and have a very active lifestyle).
For women the outcome should be somewhere between 9 pancakes per day (when you are
short, light-weight, older, and have a sedentary lifestyle) and 16 pancakes per day (when you
are tall, heavy, young, and have a very active lifestyle).
Bachelor’s survival skills – Cooking - Pancakes
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Assignment 3: Throw a pancake party!
Complete the plan for your pancake party below, and hand it in to your teacher.
Hint: Decide on the number of friends, type of pancakes, and estimate how many pancakes
each of your friends is likely to eat.
My pancake party Name: Date: Send invitations to: Shopping list: