How to make simple Scotch pancakes

There is something terribly cheering about Scotch pancakes. Even the best normal pancakes are a bit floppy, a bit (whisper it) flabby. They give the cook the choice of eating them one by one as they cook, or resigning themselves to the reality of a mostly tepid, slightly clammy pile. Scotch pancakes are not like this.

So let’s get this straight: what are they? A Scotch pancake, sometimes known by its other name, a drop scone, is a leavened and griddled pancake. It is far thicker and smaller than its unscotched sister, and although on the face of it bears a strong a resemblance to its American sibling, it’s really rather different.

There’s more flour, for one thing, which means Scotch pancakes have more substance than the fluffier American type and that they cook with a very slight crust. Both of these factors give rise to the loveliest, most comforting, joyful feature of the scotch pancake: it can, and traditionally should be, buttered like a slice of toast. Scotch pancakes are also slightly sweeter than the American-style, which means they are designed for salty half-melted butter. Scotch pancakes should be eaten, hot and crisp, with butter dripping down your wrist. Delightfully, the robust mixture means that if you are a person who can exercise some level of perverse willpower when faced with a heap of these golden discs, they are just as delicious briefly toasted at a later time.

I was introduced to Scotch pancakes by my Brown Owl in a small church hall in Sunderland in 1995. ‘These,’ our Brown Owl told us, flipping the small pancakes with a deftness I thought achingly competent, ‘will be the staple of your university lives. They are perfect student food.’ And indeed they are: so easy, so delicious, made with staple store cupboard ingredients, and don’t require resting like the traditional pancake batter, so can satisfy an immediate craving.