Pancakes for Shrove Tuesday!

My Mother decided to put up a Pancake recipe since Shrove Tuesday is around the corner. For those of you who do not know Shrove Tuesday marks the beginning of lent, a month of fasting for Christians.

Shrove Tuesday is noted for the customs of eating Pancakes and hence is also known as Pancake Day. These Goan Pancakes are filled with coconut and jaggery making them unique to Goa because of the Goan Jaggery.

Lets take a look at the Coconut Jaggery Pancake Recipe!

Main Pancake Ingredients:

250 Grams Flour Maida
1/2 a Scraped Coconut
1 Big Pyramid of Goa Jaggery
3 – 4 Cardamoms (Elaichi)
1 Egg
Vanilla Essence
Pinch of Salt
Oil to Fry

Procedure:

To make it easier I have broken up the recipe in three parts,

1. Making the Pancake Batter
2. Making the Pancake Filling
3. Frying and Stuffing the Pancake

1. Making the Pancake Batter

Lets start with the batter, put the flour in a vessel and add a pinch of salt.

Add the egg to the flour as well.

Now you can add some milk to the mixture and beat it up, in the next step you will add some water to the mixture. In case you want your pancakes to be rich you can add more milk instead of water.

We added some water, not too much just a little bit.

Stir and mix all the ingredients, if it does not seem to be disolving feel free to add more milk or water.

You will have to keep stirring till all the lumps disappear.

Add a little vanilla essence to the mixture and continue stirring.

Once all the lumps have dissolved and the pancake batter is flowing smoothly with a certain amount of viscosity its ready.

2. Making the Pancake Filling

You can make this alongside while making the batter, break the piece of jaggery and put it in a vessel.

Add the coconut to it and add a little water, just enough to assist the jaggery with its melting.

Crush the Cardamom and remove the skin.

After pounding the insides add it to the coconut jaggery mixture and place it on a slow flame

Make sure the flame is on slow and keep stirring it occasionally, you do not want to end up burning the filling so be careful not to forget to stir it.

As it progresses you will be able to notice the coconut picking up the jaggery colour.

Once all the jaggery has mixed with the coconut it will get this nice brown colour, you now have the filling ready and can keep it off the flame to use later.

3. Frying and Stuffing the Pancake

The last part and clearly the one that requires the most skill, put some oil on the pan just enough for the entire base to get coated.

Once thats done, take a spoonful of batter and pour it on the pan, tilt the pan so that you can spread the pancake on the surface of the pan, you can turn up the flame a bit.

So now its simple frying, wait till one side cooks then turn it around to cook the either side.

Once one side gets golden brown toss the pancake to get the other side cooked, remember that the second side to cook is always smoother and should be facing down while filling the pancake.

This ensures that the pancake when ready has the smooth texture on top making it all the more desirable.

Once you have are filling your pancake you can add a wee bit of oil or ghee to the pan and start frying the next pancake.

To roll the pancake up, you firstly need to fill it with a spoon full of the coconut mixture. Spread it out in a line, fold the left and right side of the pancake as shown in the picture below.

Onces thats done start rolling the pancake from the top, again you have the image below to show you how to wrap a pancake!

Once you wrap them up, your pancakes are ready to eat! I hope you enjoyed this recipe as well, its the longest goan recipe on this blog I think, even though it is a simple recipe.

Don’t these pancakes look delicious, this recipe should make around 6 to 8 of them, until next time, eat well!