Tasty 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 smooth batter consistency. Then, we heated up oil in a pan and scooped some of the batter in, cooking the pancake until both sides were golden brown. Once all the pancakes were cooked, we added some honey and sesame seeds to the top and gave them a taste.
Reflection:
While at school over spring break, Eva, Annie, Tiff, and I decided to use the VCAM kitchen to create some roman dessert pancakes. I was very excited to complete this task, as I’ve always loved pancakes and was ready to try an ancient variation. The first thing I noticed about this recipe was the limited ingredients, just flour, water, honey, and sesame seeds. There were no milk, eggs, butter, or baking powder in the pancake batter, so I was intrigued to see what the texture would be and how it would vary in comparison to traditional modern pancakes. Once we mixed the flour, water, and honey, we noticed the batter was thicker than normal, which was to be expected. We then added the oil to the pan and cooked them like traditional pancakes, flipping them until the color was even on both sides. After taking them off the stove, they seemed heavier and less fluffy than standard pancakes, again which was to be expected. Once we topped the pancakes with the honey and sesame seeds, we did a taste test, and I was pleasantly surprised. I was not expecting it to taste great considering the limited ingredients, but the honey and surprisingly the sesame seeds made a tasty sweet and slightly savory pancake. The only thing I did not love was the texture of the pancake, which was pretty dense and chewy. This I expected, as flour and water make more of a dough instead of a typical light and fluffy pancake batter, however, I still enjoyed and finished my pancake. In the future, I would add some salt to the pancake toppings to make it a true sweet and savory dish. Overall, I thought the process of making the dish was both easy and enjoyable, and doing it amongst friends made it an even better experience.
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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.