So, you lucky people in the UK, Ireland, Australia and Canada, you’re in for probably one of the lesser-celebrated days of your calendar today – Shrove Tuesday. Who doesn’t love a day where you can make that random bit of loveliness? Why is it just one day? Ah, well, let me explain…

Shrove Tuesday is the day before Lent starts. You know, that whole "Giving up some food" thing? Well, back in the old-y times, they used to not eat anything until the evening, when they would have a small meal and/or some alcohol for forty days. What a life.

Anyway. You make pancakes to get rid of the rich ingredients you won’t eat over Lent. Those being things like eggs, milk and sugar. What better way than to make something you can cover in all fatly goodness, eh? Exactly. So here’s my lovely simple little pancake recipe (which I half stole from the BBC… sorry about that…) for you to enjoy.

Short and simple pancakes.

Right. To make these lovely little awesome pancakes, you’ll need a few things. You’ll need 2 eggs, 110g plain flour, 200ml full cream milk, 75ml water, 40g butter and a pinch of salt. Lovely. Oh, you’ll need a sieve, whisk, a mixing bowl, a dish and unless you’re just magic a pan. Hence the name.

Sift your flour into your mixing bowl. Just bosh it all in at once and shake it a bit. It’s not difficult. If anything it’s the fun bit.

Hollow out a little hole in the middle of your flour and break a couple of eggs into it and sprinkle a bit of salt in there too. Give it a quick whisk around, so your egg can be doing something while you do the next bit instead of just sitting there bored.

In a measuring jug or something, bosh the water and the milk together and give it a little stir so it’s all happily combined. Next you’ll want to pour in the milk-water mixture into the eggy flour. Only add a smidge at a time and whisk that in, otherwise your pancakes will feel like tires or, failing that, water. That’s never good.

Once you’ve added the last of the milky water, you’ll want to whisk it round until it’s practically watery. If anything it’ll be slightly thicker than water… creamy, even. Yeah. Like that.

Finally you’ll want to grab your knob… of butter and stick it into a pan of some sort and heat it up. You don’t want to cook it or anything, just melt it. Then when it’s all melted and lovely, you’ll want to take two shallow tablespoons of it and whisk that into your mixture. Take what’s left and put it into a dish or something. You’ll need it, honest.

Right. Now you’re pretty much set to make pancakes. All you need now is to grab your frying pan and put it under the highest heat you can. Get some kitchen towel or one of those fancy brush basting things to cover the inside of the pan with a light coating of butter to stop the pancake sticking.

Turn it down to medium heat, and spoon in enough mixture as you want. If you have a ladle or something, usually two thirds of that full is plenty. Make sure you do it quick, otherwise half of it will be cooked while you’re still putting it in.

After about a minute’s gone, it’s time you get your flip on. Flip over the pancake to see if the underside is cooking right. Probably a good idea to do this when nobody’s watching, unless you like looking like a pillock.

You’ll know when it’s done when both sides look a nice golden colour and aren’t still doughy or anything. Then bosh whatever you want over it. I’m a fan of the classic lemon juice and sugar approach. But I hear honey’s quite good…

There you have it. Kick-ass, home-made pancakes. Or you could always buy them premade from Tesco… hmm. Never thought of that…

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