Day 232: a long-time favourite

As you know, our life has become somewhat chaotic and our days non-stop since becoming daddies at the beginning of the year. While we, of course, still eat (perhaps now more than ever), a lot of it has been cooking what I have in the fridge/cupboards and what I remember to pick up from the supermarkets; most of my weekly shops tend to be reactive, with very little time for the planning and listing of what I would actually need to buy to cook a recipe for the cookalong. I still come up with some lovely dishes - if I say so myself - and a lot of them are even inspired by things I’ve made on this cookalong so far. Anyway, I am very grateful to be able to dedicate a bit of time each week for a couple of mindful cookalongs that I can take my time with and enjoy - the recipe reading, the ingredient measuring, the cooking, the photographing and the posting on here and on social media.

Parental leave means the week can start with pancakes for breakfast, and although I've been using this recipe since I was about 16 years old (nearly 20yrs ago), this is its cookalong debut: Day 232 is Nigella’s American Breakfast Pancakes. I have the fondest memories of Sunday breakfasts with one of my besties and her children, sat down to a big plateful of these; today, a whole new set of memories were forged with our own children, as we ate our way through this gorgeous maple syrup-drenched stack, rain hammering at the window. Commitments mean we can't celebrate our first #PancakeDay together as a family tomorrow, so we feasted today.

Whenever work took me to America, which used to be about twice a year (pre-lockdowns and pre-parenthood), the first thing I'd do would be to hunt down the nearest diner for my first breakfast, eat pancakes and drink several mugs of 2hr-old what I think was supposed to be coffee. Cliché, I know, but I so miss it. And I like the coffee - half & half and one sugar for me please. I stumbled upon the vanilla half & half at the hotel breakfast buffet on my last trip, also good.

Nigella’s American Breakfast Pancakes

Uniformity is not my strong point, but I can’t say that I’m really upset about that, to be honest. In fact, I’m rather fond of the butter-crisped frilly bits (which on a fried egg I cannot stand!).

The recipe for Nigella’s American Breakfast Pancakes can be found on p77 of How To Be A Domestic Goddess and on nigella.com (link below).