Fluffy American Pancakes served with a Blue Heaven Milkshake.

Today was the second Saturday morning that Jai & I wanted to make a sweet tooth's dream breakfast.

We decided on making pancakes, but not the easy, boring one cup of flour, one cup of milk and one egg type ones. We wanted to try make those fluffy American pancakes you get at restaurants but never seem to be able to nail at home.

We looked up 'fluffy American pancakes' and decided to go with the trusty BBC recipe. We gathered the ingredients and started cooking up the pancakes, while blending up the ingredients for our Blue Heaven Milkshake.

I wanted the second milkshake that I'd make in my new blender from Jai to be the iconic Aussie 'Blue Heaven' Milkshake ever since I found out they sell the Blue Heaven topping at the supermarkets in Australia now.

The Blue Heaven Milkshake has always fascinated me as it was my favorite flavour milkshake and thickshake as a kid. And as usual whenever someone from overseas would ask what it tasted like my response was always 'blue' and to be honest it still is!

A little research suggests that the closest flavour to Blue Heaven is Vanilla Raspberry, but it is so sweet, syrupy and artificial tasting that it's hard to believe there is any fruit flavour in it at all.

 Fluffy American Pancakes.

Notes

We noticed the batter was a little too thick so added a tiny amount of milk to the mix to make it spread more easily in the pan. Also, the recipe says it makes 4-6 however it made four medium sized pancakes which we managed to eat between the two of us! Lastly we opted to use self raising flower AND baking powder to make the pancakes extra fluffy.

Ingredients

- 135g plain flour

- 1 tsp baking powder

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 2 tbsp caster sugar

- 130ml milk

- 1 large egg, lightly beaten

- 2 tbsp melted butter, plus extra for cooking

To serve

- What ever floats your boat! My favourite is butter, maple syrup and ice cream but I also love sugar and lemon too.

Method

1. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and caster sugar into a large bowl. In a separate bowl or jug, lightly whisk together the milk and egg, then whisk in the melted butter.

2. Pour the milk mixture into the flour mixture and, using a fork, beat until you have a smooth batter. Any lumps will soon disappear with a little mixing. Let the batter stand for a few minutes.

3. Heat a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat and add a knob of butter. When it's melted, add a ladle of batter (or two if your frying pan is big enough to cook two pancakes at the same time). It will seem very thick but this is how it should be. Wait until the top of the pancake begins to bubble, then turn it over and cook until both sides are golden brown and the pancake has risen to about 1cm (½in) thick.

4. Repeat until all the batter is used up. You can keep the pancakes warm in a low oven, but they taste best fresh out the pan.

5. Serve with lashings of real maple syrup and extra butter if you like.

Top recipe tips

- For extra-fluffy pancakes substitute self-raising flour for plain flour and still use the baking powder.

- Serve the pancakes with fresh strawberries and good vanilla ice cream.

- Use half buckwheat flour and half plain flour and serve with maple syrup and bacon. You can also add one teaspoon of ground cinnamon to the buckwheat batter and serve with caramelised apple slices and thick double cream.

Click HERE to see the BBC's recipe for Fluffy American Pancakes.

Tasty pancakes and a huge Blue Heaven Milkshake for brekkie. So sweet!

The pancakes turned out better than we could have hoped for. They were perfectly fluffy on the inside with a little crunch on the outside.

Below is the Blue Heaven Milkshake with a handful of ice cubes, a few scoops of ice cream, a little milk and lashings of Blue Heaven syrup!