English Pancakes

English pancakes are a traditional British breakfast usually eaten on Shrove Tuesday — or Pancake Day — and are a thin crepe-like pancake filled with sprinkles of lemon juice and sugar. English pancakes are slightly thicker than a traditional crepe. While you can fill them with sweet or savory fillings, the traditional English toppings are sugar and lemon juice.

My family loves pancakes for breakfast, so we love having plenty of pancake options. You can’t go wrong with my buttermilk pancakes — the classic, fluffy pancake recipe we all love! German pancakes, cinnamon chip pancakes, and pumpkin pancakes are also family go-tos.

Why This Recipe Works

• This recipe is so easy to make — all you need are your ingredients and a blender.
• This is a great breakfast recipe since it requires only 3 ingredients that you always have on hand and
• Forget about messy breakfasts. Thanks to the blender, this recipe makes hardly any dishes.
• While lemon juice and sugar are the traditional toppings for English pancakes, feel free to customize these to your family’s liking. See my recipe tips section for filling/topping ideas.

Ingredients

• Eggs: The egg to milk/flour ratio is important because it’s what makes English pancakes different than crepes.
• Flour: I use regular all-purpose flour.
• Milk: I use normal cow’s milk. I haven’t made this with almond milk, but it shouldn’t be too different if you are looking for a dairy-free option. The taste may be different due to the almond aspect of the milk.
• Melted Butter: I like to brush a bit of melted butter onto the pancakes before the lemon and sugar.
• Lemon Juice: You can leave a little bowl of lemon juice on the table for people to add more on top of the rolled English pancakes if they’d like.
• Granulated Sugar: I take a normal spoon and sprinkle the sugar after the lemon juice — so it sticks to the pancake.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Add the eggs, flour and milk to a blender. Blend until smooth — about 30 seconds.

2. Warm a cast iron skillet over medium to medium-low heat. (You’ll want to finagle with your stove top settings to get a feel for what the best temperature for you will be).
3. Butter the skillet.
4. Holding the skillet in one hand (with a hot pad on!!) pour 1/3 cup of the batter into the skillet while rotating the skillet around in a circle so that the batter spreads across the entire pan.
5. Place the pan on the burner and let cook for 1 minute or until lightly golden brown. Use a rubber spatula and flip the pancake over and continue to cook the other side until lightly golden.

6. Transfer the cooked English pancake to a plate. Continue this process until all of the batter has been used up (buttering between every pancake).

Recipe Tips

English pancake batter: Once the batter is made, you can place it in the fridge to sit for about 15-30 minutes. I’ve always heard that allowing the batter to rest prevents the English pancakes from tearing. Is this true? It’s hard to say! I usually don’t have a lot of tearing issues, whether I let the batter sit or not.

Making English pancakes: I like to use a fresh cube of butter and fold down the top of the butter wrapper. I then grab the wrapped end of the cube and quickly rub the open portion of the butter stick over the skillet.

I use this cast iron skillet to make these pancakes.

English Pancake Toppings

You can fill each pancake with the butter, lemon juice and sugar and roll them up, or you can leave them open and let people fill them with their preferred amount of lemon juice/sugar — or different toppings even.

To pre-fill English pancakes: Lay a single crepe on a large plate. Using a pastry brush, lightly brush some melted butter overtop of the crepe. Next, squeeze fresh lemon juice overtop, about 1 1/2 teaspoons worth. And lastly, sprinkle a nice dosage of granulated sugar over the lemon juice. Starting on one end, roll the crepe up until it sort of resembles a log.

Leave some lemons/lemon juice and a bowl of sugar on the table so people can top with additional lemon juice and sugar if they want.

You can forgo the lemon juice and sugar and dollop some Greek yogurt whipped cream with a drizzle of raspberry sauce or homemade lemon curd. I also like filling one or two with fresh fruit and some vanilla ice cream.

FAQs

More Breakfast Recipes

• Almond Milk Pancakes
• Easy Breakfast Casserole
• Banana Oatmeal Pancakes
• Steel Cut Oats
• Mango Overnight Oats

This recipe was originally published on Aug. 30, 2019. It was republished on July 27, 2021, to include additional information and photos.