Pancake Topping Ideas for Shrove Tuesday
Whether you enjoy your pancakes for breakfast, dinner or dessert (or as a one-off snack you can stack!), getting creative with sweet and savoury topping combinations is the best way to keep the fun going on Shrove Tuesday. Pancakes are delightfully versatile and so easy to personalise – you can try them fresh and fruity, savoury and crunchy or a little bit of both.
No matter your hankering, our roundup of terrific Pancake Day toppers is sure to leave you hungry and inspired. The only problem is, they’re far too delicious to save for once a year. It’s a good job they’re all slimming friendly, isn’t it?
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Start with a Pancake Day shopping list
Since pancakes are so quick and easy to make, they’re the perfect opportunity to experiment with different flavour combinations. When you’re popping to the shops ahead of Shrove Tuesday, you don’t have to know for certain whether you’ll be on Team Sweet or Team Savoury – but it definitely helps!
We tend to grab a similar bunch of staples from the supermarket every time Pancake Day rolls around, and then we’ll make additions based on what we fancy:
While you’d never know from how good they taste, all of our pancakes are made without an ounce of flour or butter in sight. As a healthier alternative to traditional versions, we use oats to give our Oat Pancakes their magical, low-calorie fluffiness.
The secret to fluffiness is in how fine your ‘flour’ is; if you’ve got rolled oats at home, blitzing them in a blender or food processor is a handy hack.
If you’re after a more convenient solution, you can always use a like-for-like measure of Ready Brek instead. It leaves your pancakes light and airy in texture, without the need to crack out the blender.
Now we’ve got the basics covered, it’s time to get flippin’ inspired!
Fresh and fruity pancake topping ideas
If you’ve got a sweet tooth when it comes to pancakes, using fresh or frozen fruits to give your stack a boost of sweetness is always a good idea. For our Banana and Chocolate Pancakes, we’ve teamed sliced bananas up with strawberries, sweetener and chocolate to create a stack you’ll want to revisit beyond Shrove Tuesday.
If you’re not a huge fan of bananas, there’s nothing to stop you swapping in your favourite fruits. Just be sure to adjust the calories, if you’re counting.
You might notice we’ve ramped up the indulgence by adding chocolate spread and a finishing drizzle of low-calorie syrup. As Sweet Freedom’s Choc Shot is lower in calories at 13 calories per teaspoon (the calorie count may differ between flavours), you won’t regret playing around with the different sweet sauces they have to offer.
Pancake Day is a great opportunity to celebrate your favourite dreamy combos, from apple and cinnamon to lemon and blueberry. For topping inspiration, you don’t just have to look at pancakes!
Our Strawberry Souffle Omelette’s dessert-style filling would go down a storm on top of your stack. You can even add a dusting of icing sugar, for a bit of pizzazz!
Nothing freshens up Pancake Day quite like trying something new! If you don’t normally go for a savoury topping, you might want to give our Cheesy Courgette Pancakes a try. A cracking way to start the day, you won’t believe they’re only 261 calories per serving!
As long as you use a vegetarian Italian hard cheese, they’ll make any veggies at the table happy too. We’ve topped ours with added bacon medallions (they’re leaner and lower in fat than standard bacon) and tomatoes, but there’s nothing to stop you adding a dippy fried egg or meat-free sausage.
Have you tried our Savoury Breakfast Pancakes yet? Flavoured with cheese and chives, they’ll be your new-favourite way to start the day.
Our cross between a salsa and guacamole makes for a delicious savoury topping, with fresh tomatoes, avocado and a hint of chilli. Drizzle over the creamy yoghurt mixture and add a lovely saltiness by sprinkling on some crispy bacon and chorizo.
Every household has different traditions on the big day, but one thing remains the same across the board: you’ve got to have a go at flipping! If you don’t already have a durable set of frying pans that you’d trust to keep a steady supply of flippable creations coming, this inexpensive set will serve you well. The non-stick coating makes flipping and washing-up afterwards easier!
Store cupboard pancake topping ideas
It’s a good idea to take inventory of what’s already in your store cupboard, so you aren’t buying anything you don’t need ahead of the Pancake Day festivities. If you’re looking for a way to use up maple syrup, look no further than our Bacon and Maple Blueberry Pancakes.
Inspired by American diner style breakfasts, it’s perfect to tuck into on special occasions.
To serve them fluffy and sweet in the middle, we’ve added sweetener and vanilla extract to our batter. If you absolutely love blueberries, there’s nothing to stop you adding them into the pancake mix too – they’ll add a really nice burst of warm fruitiness!
There’s no better time to crack out your favourite jarred treats than Shrove Tuesday. If you really want to ‘wow’ with your stack, Biscoff spread never fails. While you might not expect it to be a slimming-friendly choice, our Lotus Biscoff American Pancakes come in at just 307 calories per serving!
You can find the full recipe in our third cookbook, Pinch of Nom: Quick and Easy, on pages 24-25.
Looking for s’more inspiration? Our S’mores Pancakes bring everyone’s favourite campfire-inspired treat to the dining table. Combining the magic of chocolate spread, crumbled chocolate chip cookies and mini marshmallows, they’re to die for with a swirl of reduced-fat aerosol cream. The full recipe is in Pinch of Nom: Enjoy on pages 270-271.
We’ve got two words for you: Chocolate Pancakes. If you tend to go chocolate crazy on Shrove Tuesday, you’ll want to flip to page 30 of your copy of Pinch of Nom: Comfort Food. Our Chocolate Pancakes will satisfy your cravings, for a fraction of the calories you’d expect.
If you’ve got any tinned fruit gathering dust at the back of the cupboard, now’s your time to give them a new lease of life. Adding sliced fruit and a drizzle of low-calorie syrup or honey never fails to take your stack to the next level.
Remember you’ll want to count the calories for any additional toppings and treats, if you’re keeping track!
From oven to plate in 20 minutes, try something a bit different with our Banana Pancake Traybake. They’re made with a dreamy combo of sliced bananas and chocolate chips, but there’s nothing to stop you mixing things up.
Will you go for sweet or savoury toppings this year?
It’s time to get flipping! There’s nothing we’d love more than seeing your pancake photos over in our Facebook group. It’s a community made up of almost 1 million lovely community members waiting to offer support, or answer any questions you might have.
You can also look for inspo in our Gallery – head over and have a nosy at what everyone else has been sharing lately. You’ll need to sign up to a free website account to upload and share your own photos (we’ve got a step-by-step guide on how to do that just here).
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