Pancake topping ideas

Pancake Day is one of my favourite days of the year. I absolutely love pancakes – I’ve been making them since I was a kid and they remind me of Saturday mornings in the kitchen with my dad. The pancakes above are oaty blueberry pancakes and they’re up on The Greedy Girls. These suggestions are designed to go with basic crepe style pancakes – here’s my how to recipe and video. You can put all sorts of things on pancakes – here are my suggestions…

Sweet

• Lemon and sugar – the ultimate classic. Best with freshly squeezed lemon juice and golden caster sugar.
• Maple syrup and bacon – the proper stuff, not the cheap imitation stuff. I’m taking £5 for a tiny bottle. It’s worth it, trust me. And it goes SO well with bacon.
• Nutella / Nutella and bananas – Nutella is another classic – it’s sweet and chocolatey and brilliant. And it’s best with bananas. Or strawberries. Or, you know, more Nutella.
• Salted caramel and toasted pecans – sure you can buy it but it’s not hard to make your own.
• Chocolate sauce and chopped hazelnuts – I also recommend making your own. It’s delicious.
• Lemon curd and ricotta – lemon curd (especially home made) is amazing with pancakes and it goes beautifully with ricotta.
• Tinned peaches and mascarpone, with a smidge of vanilla – mix some vanilla bean paste (or extract) into some mascarpone (or some fat free Greek yoghurt) and add drained tinned peaches. Deeeelish.

Savoury

• Pear, blue cheese, pine nuts, and rocket – this is gorgeous as the sweetness of the pear and the saltiness of the cheese meld beautifully. Add pine nuts for a bit of texture.
• Caramelised leeks and goats cheese – I made these last Pancake Day and they were delicious. Caramelise the leeks first on a low heat and fill the pancakes with them and the cheese. Phwoar.
• Ham and cheese – I like a nice quality wafer thin ham with a nice strong cheese – either a mature cheddar or a gruyere.