Shrove Tuesday – Doesn’t Have To Mean Lemon & Sugar!

23 / 05 / 2023

Shrove Tuesday – Doesn’t Have To Mean Lemon & Sugar!

Shrove Tuesday is always the day before the first day of Lent, known as Ash Wednesday.

This year that date falls on Tuesday 28th February , with Ash Wednesday being on Wednesday 1st March.

It is usually celebrated throughout the UK with the cooking and eating of delicious pancakes. It is also said that flipping a pancake perfectly will bring good luck all year round.

Pancakes are very versatile and can even be made into a savoury treat; however it is most commonly eaten with a sweet topping.

Nowadays there are lots of sugar alternatives which can be used instead of traditional granulated sugar, my favourite being Xylitol. It is widely available and is really delicious and does not have the aspartame after taste so many other products have.

So it is now easier than ever to enjoy very low sugar pancakes.

The following recipe is my family’s favourite, tried and tested…repeatedly…for research purposes obviously!

Yummy scrummy low sugar pancakes:

Makes 10/12 pancake.

2 eggs

150g plain flour

300ml milk

Salt (just a little pinch)

Butter (for greasing the pan)

1. Sift the plain flour and salt into a large bowl.
2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then add it to the flour.
3. Add about a quarter of the milk and whisk until combined.
4. Gradually add the remaining milk whisking to combine each addition before adding more -Using this method should mean that you don’t get lumps. However if you find a few have crept in then either pass your batter through a sieve, or blitz it briefly with a hand blender.
5. Melt a little butter in a frying pan on a low heat
6. Turn up the heat to medium and then once the pan is hot, add about two tablespoons of batter immediately swirl the batter around the pan so that the base is coated.
7. Cook for about 1 minute until brown and then flip and cook on the other side for a further 30 seconds.
8. Serve!

An now for the toppings, all are really easy to make and are very low in sugar.

• Banana: Mash half a medium-size banana and spread that on your stack. It’s only 53 calories and 7.2 grams of sugar but also offers over 200 milligrams of potassium.
• Fresh berries: One cup of fresh raspberries has only 5.4 grams of sugar and 64 calories but a whopping eight grams of fibre.
• Maple cinnamon yogurt: Whip up a batch of homemade maple-flavoured yogurt by mixing together Greek yogurt, milk, maple syrup, and cinnamon. A quarter-cup serving is 38 calories and only 4.1 grams of sugar, but you’ll also be getting almost five grams of protein.
• Frozen pureed fruit: Throw one cup of frozen blueberries into the blender, and pour it on your pancakes. It is 13.1 grams of sugar, has 79 calories, and also offers 4.2 grams of fibre. To make it easier, pre-freeze pureed fruit in ice cube trays, and you can microwave a few cubes when you need them.
• Almond butter: One tablespoon of creamy nutty almond butter spread on your pancakes has only one gram of sugar, 95 calories, and 3.5 grams of protein.

These are just a few suggestions, you can create all sorts of yummy master pieces. However you eat yours, enjoy it!