Brûlée Japanese Pancakes

Wiggly, jiggly pancakes with a delicious melted sugar crust. These are absolutely delicious and, wish a little bit of practise, will become your go to pancake recipe.

1 hour cook

Serves 2

Hugh Woodward

Ingredients

What you'll need:

4large egg whites

1/2 tsplemon juice

1/2 tspflaked salt

6 tbspcaster sugar

2 egg yolks

1 tspbaking powder

2 tspvanilla extract

6 tbspplain flour

60mlwhole milk

50mlvegetable oil

to servewhipped cream, maple syrup, berries

Japanese pancakes use a soufflé technique to get lighter-than-air results. We absolutely love them and hope you will too!

Method

Use an electric whisk to whisk the egg whites, lemon juice and flaked salt until foamy. Slowly add 5 tbsp of the caster sugar until you have a glossy, pillowy meringue mixture just under the stiff peak stage. Set aside briefly.

Meanwhile, whisk together (by hand) the egg yolks, the remaining 1 tbsp of sugar, baking powder, vanilla extract, plain flour and whole milk.

Fold this, tenderly, 1/3 at a time, into the egg whites.

Grease two round cookie cutters around 3 inches in diameter and place them on a greased non stick frying pan over a very, very low heat. Fill half way with batter. Place a lid on top and cook for 6 minutes - the batter will rise to the top and be just set.

Very carefully flip them over and cook, with the lid on again, for further 3 minutes.

Sprinkle the tops with caster sugar and use a blow torch to melt the sugar, being careful not to burn the pancakes. Serve with whipped cream, maple syrup and berries.