Quick and Easy Pancake Recipes: Our Top Tips for Perfect Pancakes Every Time

Pancake Day has to be one of our favourite days of the year – who doesn’t love an excuse to have pancakes for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Sweet, savoury or fruity, they’re guaranteed to get the whole family around the table.

We’ve got plenty of delicious recipe ideas that prove pancakes can be lighter in calories while still tasting utterly indulgent. Keep scrolling to read through our favourite bits of kit AND our top tips on how to serve perfectly fluffy pancakes every time…

This post contains affiliate links. Find out what this means.

Essential equipment

You’ll need to make sure you’ve got the kit in the run-up to Shrove Tuesday (we’re always updating our Amazon Storefront with our favourite kitchen equipment finds, tap here to visit). First of all, we can’t stress enough how important a good whisk is to get a smooth pancake batter.

It really is a kitchen essential for so many of our recipes, and we love this one from Chef Aid as it has an integrated bowl scraper to make sure that none of the mix gets left behind. 

Joseph Joseph also has a whisk that folds down flat to make storage super simple and convenient – perfect if you’re short on kitchen space. 

If you’re struggling to get the perfect pancake flip, then a wide spatula is the tool for you! 

As the name suggests, it’s much wider than a normal spatula and will help to make flipping your pancakes foolproof. It’s also a really versatile tool to have on hand as it can be used for omelettes, fish and eggs as well. 

There are a couple of different things that can help make sure that your pancakes have uniform shapes and one of these is a ladle. More commonly used for scooping out portions of soup or stew, using a ladle to measure out your pancake mix means that you can make sure that you’re using roughly the same amount each time.

If you’re looking to make your pancakes a bit more interesting then why not use some moulds to make them into different shapes? You can buy special pancake moulds online, or you could just use cookie cutters instead – stars, hearts, circles, the sky’s the limit! 

To take your pancakes up to the next level, try putting your pancake mix into easy-squeeze sauce bottles like these and using them to draw out different shapes in your pan. 

This technique is perfect for kids and you can even use it to make colourful pancakes – just split your mixture between several bottles and mix in a few drops of your chosen food colouring!

All of these tools are important to achieving perfect pancakes, but they’re almost useless if you don’t use a non-stick frying pan. 

This is absolutely vital to make sure that your pancakes don’t stick and means that you can cut down on the amount of butter or oil you’re using to grease the pan – and all of those unnecessary calories! 

Sweet or savoury?

Believe it or not, pancakes don’t just have to have sweet toppings – they’re also delicious when topped with savoury ingredients as well!

If you’re new to savoury pancakes, our Bacon and Maple Blueberry Pancakes are the recipe to start with. It might sound like a combination that shouldn’t work, but trust us: bacon and maple syrup is the perfect mixture of salty and sweet!

You could also try topping your pancakes with spinach, ham and a melty layer of reduced-fat Cheddar cheese for a lunchtime twist! We can’t talk about cheese-topped pancakes without mentioning our Cheesy Courgette Pancakes.

On the table in under 20 minutes, they’re light, fluffy and delicious served with a side of crispy bacon and a few grilled tomatoes. Breakfast is served!

If you love Mexican-style flavours, this one might just be your new-favourite way to start the day. Turn to page 28-29 of our Express cookbook for our full Savoury Breakfast Pancakes recipe.

Our cross between a salsa and guacamole makes for a delicious savoury topping, with fresh tomatoes, avocado and a hint of chilli.

Want to stick to sweet toppings? Our Folded Berry Pancake recipe uses aerosol cream, fresh fruit and Sweet Freedom Light Fruit Syrup, while our Banana and Chocolate Pancakes are filled with fresh bananas, Choc Shot and chocolate spread – two very different, but super indulgent, slimming-friendly treats!

If you want to keep it simple and go for the more traditional Pancake Day toppings, then lemon juice and granulated sweetener work really well and sweetened quark is another fantastic topping option.

We can’t say no to Biscoff on a normal day, but it’s even tougher to resist with fluffy pancakes in the mix! Our Banana Biscoff Pancakes are so esay to flip, fold and fill, that they’re ready in a matter of minutes.

We’ve used smooth Biscoff spreadfor the filling and the showstopping drizzle – it’s really easy to find at most supermarkets or on Amazon. You can always read through our blog full of slimming-friendly Biscoff recipe ideas, if you’re on the hunt for more inspiration.

Fancy trying something a little bit different? This plate full of cocktail-inspired Piña Colada Pancakes is just as fun to make as it is to eat.

Bursting with bright and tropical slimming-friendly flavours, we’ve topped our coconutty pancakes with a sticky-sweet pineapple and lime topping and a dollop of creamy fat-free Greek yoghurt.

Pancakes not your thing?

We know that pancakes aren’t for everyone and that’s where our quick and easy waffle recipes come in.

Just like pancakes, waffles can be savoury or sweet and we have recipes for both! Give savoury a go with our Onion and Chive Potato Waffles and Potato, Cheese and Onion Waffles, or enjoy sweet toppings with our Strawberry and Vanilla Waffles and Lemon and Blueberry Waffles. 

If you do choose these over pancakes, then you’ll need either a waffle maker, or a silicone waffle mould like this one, that you can bake in the oven.

Top tips for achieving pancake perfection

• Use a hot pan! You’ll know that it’s hot enough if you can add a couple of drops of water to the pan and they sizzle and jump around.
• Don’t jiggle your pancake while it’s cooking – pop your mixture into a hot pan and leave it alone. Once the edges have started to go crispy and the top has started to bubble slightly, gently lift the sides of the pancake up to check underneath. If the bottom is a light golden brown, then you can get flipping!
• Mix your batter well and DON’T over mix it. The aim is to get most of the lumps out – if you carry on mixing past this point, then you run the risk of stodgy pancakes (nooo!).
• No matter how tempting it might be, don’t squish your pancakes down with the spatula. It’ll make them flatten and lose that all-important light airiness. If you find that your pancakes are browning too quickly, it’s an easy fix: just reduce the heat a little!
• It’s a general rule of thumb that your first pancake will be less than perfect…treat this as your chef’s perk and enjoy it as a snack while you’re cooking the rest!

Let us know how the pancake flipping goes!

We’d love to see photos of your pancake stacks piled high this Shrove Tuesday. You can drop them in our Facebook group where we’ve got almost 1 million lovely community members waiting to answer any pancake-related questions you might have (or just for a general chit-chat!).

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).

If you liked this article, there’s more where that came from. Explore our blog to browse for recipe ideas, kitchen equipment recommendations, money-saving tips and more.