Sweet and Salty English: Teaching English Through Baking: American Pancakes

By The U.S. Army (Culinary Soldier) [CC-BY-2.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Last month at the American Corners in Belgrade I premiered “Sweet and Salty English,” teaching English through baking. That’s right, baking. Julia Childs re-incarnate. Well, not really, but it's really cool! Each month spouses will showcase American baked goods that are not common in Serbia. We’ll teach them how to make our favorite sweet comfort foods like chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and pancakes. What better way to spread goodwill than through sugar? 

By Joshua

Serbians specialize in crepes (sweet and savory ones- my mouth is watering as I type), but have rarely tasted good ole fluffy American pancakes. So, on a Saturday morning, in my typical Balkan trolley cart, I lugged an electric griddle, a transformer, all the ingredients in individual Tupperware, and my grandmother’s apron (for good luck!). I had converted all the ingredients into the metric system, translated some tricky words and printed out copies of the recipe. At the Corners, I had volunteers come up and help me prepare the pancakes; they were appalled at the lumpy batter and amused by the bubble test. When all was said and done, we gobbled down the delicious pancakes. A journalist from Mondo newspaper filmed the baking demonstration and posted the recipe online. My kids thought I was famous. 

My trusty trolley cart

Since it was such a hit, I thought other spouses abroad might want to reach out to their local communities sharing something all people love: Sweets! All you need are copies of the recipes, the ingredients (make sure you can get them locally), and the finished product (since actual oven use might be a logistical issue). Each month I’ll have a copy of the recipes on my blog for you to share and enjoy. Click here for the printable version of the recipe. Prijatno! Give me some sugar!

Sweet and Salty English

American Pancakes

English	Serbian
Ingredients	састојци
Flour	Брашно
Sugar	Шећер
baking powder	прашак за пециво
Salt	Со
Milk	Млеко
Oil	Уље
Egg	јаје
Mixing bowl
To combine	комбиновати
To mix, to stir	мешати
stroke	замах
To moisten	овлажити
Lump	Грумен
Griddle/frying pan	Тигањ
To bounce	одскакивати
To sputter	пуцкетање
To grease	премазати
To turn	окренути
Rim	обод
broken	сломљен
bubble	мехур

Ingredients:

1 cup (225 ml) flour

1-2 tablespoons (15-30ml) sugar

10 grams baking powder

½ teaspoon (5ml) salt

175 ml milk

2 tablespoons (30ml) vegetable oil

1 egg, slightly beaten

In a mixing bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.  Mix the milk, butter and egg in a small bowl.  Quickly stir the wet ingredients into the dry ones, mixing with just a few strokes to moisten the flour.  There will still be lumps.

Heat griddle or frying pan until a drop of water will bounce and sputter.  Grease lightly.  Spoon on batter, spreading cakes to the size you want.  Don’t crowd or they’ll be hard to turn.  Turn when the rims are full of broken bubbles and before center bubbles break (takes about 2-3 minutes).  Turn only once.  The second side won’t take as long.

Yield: 12 small pancakes