Fluffy Japanese Pancakes for Waffle Day

After holding off for a few years, I'm back watching Ann Reardon's wonderful videos and when I saw this one, I just couldn't resist trying it out.

The video actually looks at a fake video on how to make these fluffy things at home and also provides a recipe that really works.

As today is Waffle Day in Sweden, Lundulph and I are following our tradition of eating pancakes and although this type of pancake requires serving immediately after cooking, we had a 30 minute break after dinner, while I made these. But I'd prepared as much as I could before dinner and made sure to let the oven pre-heat while we ate our main course, so it was definitely a success.

Additionally, today Lundulph got his first injection of the Corona vaccine, so this was an extra treat for him and his cheeks did go rosy and his eyes went all sparkly.

I pretty much followed the recipe and the video. It calls for egg white powder, which I've never used before, so it was quite interesting. Ann Reardon also recommended using baking powder to help with stabilising things, if you're a beginner baker. I'm not, but I used it just to be on the safe side. I'll try without it next time.

Ingredients

Makes 4

2 egg yolks
1 tbsp milk
1 ¾ tbsp plain flour

2 egg whites
1 ¼ tbsp granulated sugar
1 tbsp egg white powder
1 tsp baking powder (optional)

Sweetened whipped cream
Blueberries, strawberries, banana slices
Maple syrup or honey

Method

1. Place a thick-bottomed baking sheet in the oven and pre-heat the oven to 10 °C.
2. Prepare a piece of baking paper by brushing lightly with a neutral oil.
3. Whisk together the yolks, milk and flour until a smooth batter.
4. In a large glass or metal bowl, whip the egg whites together with the sugar, egg white powder and baking powder if using. They should reach to stiff peaks stage.
5. Using a rubber/silicone spatula, scoop out some of the egg white foam and gently whisk into the yolk batter to loosen it up a bit.
6. Then pour the yolk batter into the whites and with the spatula fold in very gently and just until the two have combined and there are no streaks visible.
7. Turn down the oven to 160 °C, take out the baking tray, place the prepared baking paper and pour 3 - 4 blobs using an ice cream scoop. Leave plenty of room between them.
8. Place back in the oven and set a timer for 2 minutes 30 seconds.
9. When the time is up, open the oven and add a second blob on top of each of the previous ones. Set your timer for 7 minutes.
10. Prepare the whipped cream and fruit while the pancakes are baking.
11. When the second timer is up, take out the tray and flip them over with a palette knife. Then bake for a further 4 minutes.
12. Remove from the oven and serve immediately with the fruit, drizzled with syrup or honey and a generous blob of whipped cream.

Comparing to the video, my egg yolks were a lot paler and so the pancakes ended up paler and I was worried that they hadn't baked properly, but I was wrong, they were beautifully puffed up. Though I ended up with lots of left-over mixture when I used the ice cream scoop, so next time, I'll transer the whole mixture to a piping bag, so that I can control both shape and size more.

I only bought blueberries for these and I used maple syrup. It worked very nicely. When I served them, Lundulph wondered if these were Yorkshire puddings, because he thought they smelt a bit like that, but he cut them open, spread a lot of blueberries on top and covered with maple syrup and whipping cream. Since I got my whipping cream dispenser a couple of years ago, we've been having a lot more whipped cream than normal, because it's such fun to squirt onto our various desserts.