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| Breakfast Hotcakes with Mandarin Cardamon Drizzle |
This Hotcakes recipe borrows traditional New Zealand pikelet batter to make slightly larger-sized breakfast hotcakes. The Mandarin Cardamon sauce is inspired by the many New Zealand backyards with citrus trees laden with fragrant fruit often shared among neighbors and friends. My neighbors have a divine sweet mandarin tree, so I've chosen mandarin as the focus of the serving sauce for this recipe served with edible mandarin segments kids and adults alike will love.
Ingredients:
(Makes 6-8 hotcakes)
1 1/2 cups plain high-grade flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon plain salt (not rock salt)
1-2 tablespoons ordinary granulated sugar (to your taste but bear in mind hotcakes are served with a sweet sauce)
3/4 cup milk, preferably full cream
1 egg
About 2-3 tablespoons/25 grams butter, melted
Additional knob of butter for frypan to stop the hotcakes sticking
Method:
Sift flour, baking powder, sugar and salt together into the bowl.
Slowly add the milk to the bowl, folding gently to form a batter. Do not beat vigorously or you'll remove the air, and the cooked hotcakes will be stodgy instead of soft and fluffy.Stir in the melted butter and continue to fold the batter. The batter should be thick and ribbony, falling from the mixing spoon without it having to be shaken, but not thin and liquid like a crepe mixture. If the batter is too thick and doesn't fall from the wooden spoon, add a little more milk until it does.
Set batter aside to rest for 10-15 minutes before cooking to help the batter rise.
Heat frypan to medium heat and add the spare knob of butter to make a thin coating on the bottom of the frypan (too hot and the butter will burn; too much butter and the hotcakes will be swimming).
Once the butter has melted, ladle a spoonful of batter into the frypan for each hotcake, keeping each spoonful separate from the others to allow room to spread and rise. The hotcakes are ready to be flipped over when bubbles form across the top of the hotcake (after approximately 1-2 minutes).
Use a fish slice to flip the hotcakes over to cook the other side for 1 minute or until light brown. Use fish slice to lift the hotcakes out of the pan onto a clean tea towel opened onto a cooling rack. Fold the spare end of the tea towel over the hotcakes to keep them warm before serving.
Serving Suggestions
Serve 2-3 warm hotcakes per person topped with fresh peeled mandarin segments, Mandarin Cardamon Drizzle, and more sprinkles of ground cardamon.Relacing mandarin with lemon or lime will also work for this recipe paired with other soft eating fruit.