Pancakes with Poached Apples

I love love love pancakes on a weekend morning. This weekend we just happened to have some apples in our fruit bowl that needed to be used up, so I decided to make poached apples as well, and it was a delight. Pour on a bit of golden syrup and you’ve got yourself a perfect start to the day!

Hint: If you’re trying to organise this, the best thing to do is to get all the poached apple ingredients ready in a saucepan, and boil the jug in advance. Then, when you’ve only got 3 more pancakes to go, you can pour in the water and poach the apples so that they’re ready the moment the last pancake is out of the pan.

Pancakes

(makes 8 large)

Ingredients

3 C plain flour
0.5 C icing sugar
2 t baking powder
2 t baking soda
0.5 t salt
3 C soy milk
1 T apple cider vinegar

Method

1. Mix the soy milk and apple cider vinegar together in a bowl. Set aside.
2. Sift all the other ingredients into a large bowl. Mix in the liquids until the batter is smooth.
3. Heat a pan over a medium-low heat (a perfect heat for pancakes is hard to determine – you may have to adjust as you go).
4. Put a little oil onto a paper towel and wipe the pan so it has a very thin coating of oil.
5. Pour approximately 3/4 of a cup of the mixture into the pan.
6. Wait until the surface of the pancake has lots of small bubbles on it (some of which will have popped) and then turn the pancake over. Cook for another 2 minutes or so. The pancake should be brown on both sides, and it will have puffed up.
7. Remove the pancake to a plate. I usually cover the plate with a dish towel so that the pancakes don’t “sweat” onto the plate and go soggy. If you arrange your towel well, you can fold it over each time you add another pancake, which also keeps them a little warmer.
8. Wipe the pan with some more oil and repeat the process until all the batter is used.

Poached Apples

Ingredients

4 small-to-medium apples
2 star anise
1 t cinnamon
1 t vanilla essence
0.25 C sugar
750 ml water (approximately)

Method

1. Boil a kettle with around 750ml of water.
2. Peel the apples and slice them into 4-6 slices.
3. Place the apples and other ingredients into a saucepan. Pour boiling water over the top until the apples are just covered.
4. Bring the pot to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 5-7 minutes until the apples are tender.
5. Drain and serve.