We don’t normally bother with pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, although Pete did actually make some last night. He is In Charge of pancakes, drop scones*, chilli con carne, dhal, to name but a few.
Pancakes are so easy – flour, egg, milk, salt. And yet, all over our local small supermarkets for the past few days has been Betty Crocker’s Shake
and Make pancake mix – ingredients (including, presumably, dried egg and milk) in a plastic bottle, with room to add the requisite amount of water, shake and pour into a pan. This strikes me as just extraordinary – pancake batter is so quick and easy to make, and fun for children to do too. And the *waste* involved – are people really too idle to decant the mix into a bowl and add water from a measuring jug, even if they won’t make them from scratch? I despair.
*but, curiously, not Yorkshire Pudding.
Those shake’n’bake mixes are good if you have very limited space / kitchen equipment, or if you don’t normally cook and thus don’t have eggs / milk / flour in the house as a matter of course. And they are foolproof. I’ve been known to use them myself …
I lothe Betty Crocker and all that the brand stands for. HAve you read the list of ingredients on the average mix? Horrendous.