Dessert - or brunch

There's a recipe for banana pancakes (p215) in the 'desserts with Edmonds' chapter. While I'm sure it would make a good dessert, it also sounded like an excellent Saturday morning brunch. So this morning I rolled up my sleeves, got out the Edmonds pancake and pikelet mix, and went to work.

The instruction in the recipe is to 'make pancake mix according to packet directions'. Fair enough, except the packet indicates an egg and the recipe does not. I decided to stick with the ingredients in the recipe and leave the egg out. So really, it was just a matter of mixing the pancake mix with some milk. There were a lot of lumps in the resulting mixture - I think I should have sifted the pancake mix first.


When I had beaten out as many of the lumps as I could, I added the extra ingredients - mashed banana, finely chopped walnuts and nutmeg. The mixture was very thick but looked and smelled quite tasty.


Next, I had to cook the pancakes, again 'according to packet directions'. Well, the packet said to use 2-3 tablespoons of batter, and 'tilt the pan to cover the base with a thin layer'. I had my doubts about this - would such a thick batter spread neatly around the pan? Answer: nope. I spread it around as best I could with the back of my spoon, but the result was lumpy-looking and not terribly appealing.

Once the pancake was cooked, I found that appearances aren't everything. The pancake had a pleasant banana flavour and interesting texture from the walnuts. The recipe says to serve them with cream, but instead I used Greek yoghurt and a little bit of my lime honey. Yum.

I like the addition of banana, walnut and nutmeg to the pancakes, but the thick batter made them oddly lumpy and hard to spread around the pan. I'd definitely recommend thinning down that batter a bit if you're going to try out this one.