Pancakes with honey and mascarpone cheese

Our summer has finally come to an end. It's been long and eventful. Filled with lots of travel, family visits, and reunions. And work too amongst all the play. We are celebrating Ramadhan. A few birthdays were dotted along the way. We ate a lot.

We visited the beautiful city of Sydney. One of the most amazing places I've been to. That's when I realised how much I missed raw nature, the countryside, seafood, the mountains and rain. Yes, rain. And fog. And that light! Sydney has amazing light. And beautiful sky. Always a beautiful shade of blue.. When its not rainiing (pun intended).  Haa haa

And the best part of the summer holidays- long and leisurely breakfasts. We had eggs every way possible- baked, fried. Ofcourse scrambled ones always made it on the top of the list. They're just the way I like it.  

But what we all did agree on and always have is, pancakes. They're usually the Saturday pancake kind. Standard batter but different toppings. Hershey's Chocolate syrup kids, Honey for me, Nutella for everyone. They loved it with peanut butter, cream, banana, walnuts you name it. Oh, and additional sprinkles for the kids. 

These are a slight variation though, semolina pancakes. I first had these in dubai at Al-barsha . I was smitten, still am actually.

They smothered theirs in honey butter. I decided to fill mine with honey sweetened instead. We were just leisuring actually so its seemed only appropriate. They went down well, really well actually. Although the kids would have preferred to have their topped with sprinkles. 

Pancakes with Honey

Ingredients:

250g (8oz) fine semolina

2 tsp flour

1 tsp instant yeast

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp sugar

480ml (16fl oz) warm milk

500g (16oz) mascarpone cheese

4 tbsp honey, plus extra to serve

butter, for greasing

pistachio nuts, to serve

Directions:

In a large bowl, combine the semolina, flour, yeast, baking powder and sugar. Put the milk in a blender and add the dry ingredients. Whizz until the pancake mixture is combined and no lumps remain. Transfer to a bowl and cover with a tea towel. Leave in a warm, dry place for 45 minutes, until slightly risen and bubbles have formed on the surface.

Meanwhile, whisk the mascarpone with the honey and set aside. When you are ready to cook, whisk the pancake mixture – it should be the consistency of double cream. If it is too thick, add a little water.

Put a large nonstick pan over medium heat and grease with butter. Ladle some batter into the pan, tilting and swirling it around for an even layer. Cook for 1-2 minutes until the bottom is set and many bubbles have formed on top. Using a fish slice, remove the pancake from the pan and set aside on a plate. Repeat with the remaining batter.

To serve, drizzle with a little more honey and scatter over the raisins, almond flakes.

Makes about 40 pancakes.

Tasty Yogurt Dumplings Dahi Vadas

Ingredients:

• 2 cups Urad Dal • 5 Green Chillies (chopped) • 4'' Ginger (chopped) • 4 cups Curd • 1 cup Milk • 1/2 tsp Roasted Jeera • 1/4 tsp Red Chilli Powder • Oil for deep-frying • Salt to taste

Instructions:

How to make Dahi Vada:

• Soak two cups urad dal for about 6 hours. • Grind the soaked dal. Add salt, ginger, green chillies and little water to make smooth batter. • Beat this batter well, so that there are no lumps. • Heat oil in a pan. With the help of the slotted spoon, leave the batter in form of vadas in the oil. • Deep fry the vadas and keep them on a blotting paper to remove excess oil. • Now dip the vadas in cold salted water to extract their oil for few minutes. • Now squeeze out the water from vadas and keep them aside. • Add milk with the curd to whip the curd well. • Now add roasted jeera, red chilli powder and salt to the curd. • Put seasoned curd in a dish. Dip vadas in the curd. • Keep it in the freezer for half an hour. • Dahi Vada is ready to serve.