The Battle of the Pancakes

Today at Forest School, the Year 3 and 6 groups undertook a pancake taste challenge. The contenders were; homemade English pancake batter, shop bought pancakes and home-made Swedish pancake batter.

There are many different versions of the humble pancake throughout the world. American and Scotch pancakes use self-raising flour to create a smaller but thicker and fluffier pancake. Traditional English pancakes are wide and thin, created from a batter containing eggs, plain flour, butter and milk. Pancakes are traditionally eaten on Shrove Tuesday to mark the beginning of Lent. During festival of Shrove Tuesday, pancakes were eaten to use up ingredients such as eggs and butter that were forbidden during Lent. Christians observe the period of Lent in remembrance and reflection of the time Jesus spent fasting for 40 days and nights in the desert whilst being tempted by the devil. Christians will often abstain from (give up) luxuries such as chocolate, sweets and meat during Lent.

Swedish pancakes, known as Krumkake are smaller and crispier than English Pancakes. A special decorative cast iron flat iron is used to cook the pancakes on. They are often served rolled into a cone shape and filled with cream and fruit. They are traditionally served at Christmas. Krumkake are made with eggs, butter, plain flour, water and sugar.

The Year 6 group have learned about fire safety and fire building in a previous session so were able to pass their knowledge on to the Year 3 children. Shamraiz and Roy were responsible for lighting and maintaining the fire. When cooking over a fire you need to have a steady heat from glowing embers rather than a roaring flame. Whilst we waited for the fire to reach the right temperature, the children played a game of ‘hunt the runaway pancake’. They split into two teams and hid pictures from the story of The Runaway Pancake for the other team to find.The first team to find all their opponents’ pictures were the winners. Can you spot the Runaway Pancake in our photographs?

Finally, the fire reached the optimum temperature for cooking. We began by cooking some English pancakes in a large frying pan. We then moved on to using the krumkake iron to cook the Swedish pancakes. All the pancakes were well received, however the Swedish pancakes were judged to have the best flavour.

Once all the mixture had been used up, it was time to safely extinguish the fire and clear our equipment away. There was just time for a spot of hill and log rolling to round off the session.