Roman Dessert Pancakes

Ingredients:

• 120g flour
• 225mL water
• 2 tbsp honey
• Oil for frying
• 1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

Directions:

We mixed the flour, water, and honey together until we reached a thick batter consistency. We then heated a large amount of oil in a pan – enough to submerge the pancake in. We used a quarter cup to scoop the batter into the hot oil and waited until both sides were a golden brown and the pancake had puffed up a bit. We then removed the pancakes from the oil and placed them onto a paper towel to absorb some of that extra oil and cool down before we dug in.

Reflection:

For our roman meal, we used the VCAM kitchen to make some traditional roman pancakes! They were surprisingly yummy considering they were simply water, flour, and honey fried in oil, a simple recipe for a couple of freshmen to follow. It was pretty much equal parts water to flour and mix until we got a batter a bit thicker than that of pancake batter. We also added honey to the batter to sweeten it up a bit. We heated up vegetable oil and fried both sides of each pancake until it got a bit puffy. The first one was a bit undercooked and much too doughy. Not a pleasant eat, so we ended up cooking each for about 5 minutes before removing them from the oil. After we took them out we drizzled honey on them and some everything but the bagel seasoning. We also made some with gluten-free flour for our friend with a gluten allergy. It was super easy to adjust the recipe as we just substituted the regular flour for gluten-free flour. In my humble opinion, the gluten-free ones cooked better but were not as yummy. I assume in ancient times this was a quick and easy way to feed people with a very limited amount of ingredients. I’m sure flour and water were easy to acquire and toppings could be anything you want. I imagine these being sold with different savory and sweet toppings on the streets of Rome.