So by happy accident we discovered that there is a company who make coloured icings that you can buy at Sainsbury’s and I’m sure other supermarkets, where they supply you with four different icing heads with each tube, and guess what-they screw perfectly onto a DoddleBags nozzle!
For pancake day, we made some pancakes. I use a 3-2-1 recipe which I whizz in a food processor
We made some chocolate ganache, basically good dark chocolate, thick cream and icing sugar. Melted it on the bain marie, poured it into a DoddleBag and zipped it. We then put it in the freezer whilst Anis finished her homework. About 15 minutes later it was a great consistency for icing.
Since Valentine’s day is on a Sunday this year, how about surprising them with a Pancake Portrait. Anis shows you some examples here…
Of course Valentine’s day is 5 days after pancake day so you might have given up all those naughties for lent. I guess I should say a bit about Pancake Day or Shrove Tuesday since it’s such a longstanding tradition in British culture. It is apparently recorded since the early 1400s.
Pancake Day always falls 47 days before Easter day, and is the day before Ash Wednesday when the lent fast begins, so a great opportunity to get rid of eggs and fats, but the ingredients are also symbolic.
Eggs = Creation
Flour = Staff of Life
Salt = Wholesomeness
Milk = Purity
There are many other traditions associated with Pancake Day, such as Pancake Day races, where housewives race to church in an apron or scarf with a hot frying pan and have to flip a pancake three times before they reach the bell ringer and kiss him. Must have been one hell of a handsome bell ringer who started that tradition off!
Other excersizes were obviously encouraged, as skipping and football games all seem to have a prevalence on Shrove Tuesday, probably to work off some of that fat!
