Pancakes are one of the Netherlands' most renowned foods. They come in so many flavours, from savoury to simple sugar to apple and raisins. You'll never have to go far to find the nearest Pannenkoeken Huis, a restaurant that serves nothing but pancakes.

Dutch Pancakes are nothing like Belgian or French crépes, or traditional Shrove Tuesday pancakes, which are thin and cannot count as a true meal. Dutch Pancakes are thick and as large as an Italian pizza, which makes one a very satisfying meal.

So How Do You Make Them?

True Dutch Pancakes are too large to fit in your ordinary frying pan, but here is an alternative, smaller version; two or three pancakes should fill you up. Makes four pancakes:

Ingredients

• 4 oz. (120 g) plain flour
• ½ pint (250 ml) milk
• 1 egg

Method

1. Beat the egg and the flour together and then slowly beat in the milk. Make sure to keep your mixture nice and airy.

2. Pour a little oil onto a non-stick frying pan and allow it to heat up.

3. Pour a ladle of the mixture onto the frying pan and cook it until its down-facing side is brown. Then turn it over and cook the other side. Then serve.

Of course, to make more pancakes you can double the quantities.

Now What Do You Do?

The most common topping for your (plain) pancake would be poedersuiker (icing sugar) and stroop (a sugar syrup like treacle), or poedersuiker with butter. Another variation is brown sugar with lemon juice or a hagel-covered pancake. Hagel or hagelslag is - in its simplest form - hundreds-and-thousands of small sugary particles.

You can either cut your pancake up into little pieces or roll it up and save some cutting. Either way they are very enjoyable.

Apple and Raisins

There are over a hundred variations on the pancake, many unique to certain Pannenkoekenhuizen. The above recipe was for a plain pancake, but here are a few common variations:

• Pannekoek met Spek - With Bacon. This is best served with stroop and is much nicer than it sounds.

• Appel en Rozijnen - With Apple and Raisins.

• Pannekoek met Vanilleijs - With Vanilla Ice Cream. Not particularly traditional, but tasty nonetheless.