Cinnamon scotch pancakes with fruit and yogurt

What is a scotch pancake (drop scone)?

I have no idea. But, apparently, they are only defined by a small distinction from American pancakes - more sugar, less dense. I've found that a scotch pancake batter, unlike its adopted brother the American pancake (yes, I went there), tends to take less flour and raising agent, which gives American pancakes their almost fluffy cakey texture. However, scotch pancakes substitute that with more sugar and liquid, hence a chewy, bouncy texture (how do food bloggers do this?).

In my opinion, it's just a pancake and a pancake is a pancake. Well-made and it is a thing of beauty. The recipe I share here is adopted from a food magazine I came across literally by accident (I'll link it if I ever find it again), as most of the copies I could find were in Afrikaans. The original recipe adds blueberries, which you can totally add if you have any on hand. And like any recipe, you always have creative freedom to substitute where you can and experiment.

INGREDIENTS

• 140 gm plain baking/cake flour

• 1 teaspoon of baking powder

• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon powder

• A pinch of salt

• 2 tablespoons of sugar (caster or regular brown sugar)

• 1 large egg

• 1/4 cup of milk

• 1 tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice

• 1/3 cup water

• 1 & 1/4 tablespoons of canola oil (plain neutral vegetable cooking oil)

• extra cooking oil for fry ( about a tablespoon will be enough)

• yogurt for serving

• honey/maple syrup for serving

• fruit (strawberries or any berry, apples, mango are my favorite toppings)

METHOD

STEP 1: Dry ingredients. Sift together flour, baking powder, and cinnamon into a large bowl. Add salt and sugar and roughly (I had a mini-crisis remembering how to spell this word) whisk together. Set aside.

STEP 2: Wet ingredients. Add lemon juice to milk and let it curdle (the solids separating from the whey, the milk should look like it's gone bad but we want that!) for about 10 minutes. You can skip this step if you already have buttermilk. Use that. I just the underlying taste of the lemon though. Add the egg, water, and oil to the curdled milk and whisk evenly.

STEP 3: Combine. Add the wet mix to the dry mix and whisk together, only until the flour dissolves. Don't over mix or you will get rubbery pancakes, which is wrong on so many levels.

STEP 4: Fry. On a hot griddle or in a hot nonstick frying pan, brush some oil and ladle on the pancake batter, one ladle at a time. You will know that the underside is done and ready to flip when you see bubbles on the uncooked surface. It takes about a minute or 2 because the pan should be super hot, so do not move away. Flip the pancake and cook it on the other side for a minute. Repeat the process for the remaining batter.

STEP 5: Get to it, Picasso. Stack your pancake tower, top with yogurt and fruit, and drench in maple syrup. Stuff your mouth as you deserve.

PAT!