Anyway, my parents would be away for Christmas 2009 and we “kids” planned to get together for Christmas brunch on the public holiday Monday the 28th December. Juji and I thought it would be fun to make mini pancakes (called “poffertjes” in Dutch) for Christmas brunch. Juji and her boyfriend Jay came over to our house for a test run before Christmas.

We planned to make the pancake batter from scratch using the recipe in the booklet that came with the mini pancake maker but got lazy (I am much too lazy to muck around with live yeast and it was such a stinking hot afternoon we really wanted to minimise the prep/cooking time as much as possible) so we used a box of poffertjes mix instead. This is the real stuff from the Netherlands – the instructions on the box are all in Dutch! Luckily, there’s also a recipe in the poffertjes maker booklet for using the boxed mini pancake mix. It was so easy making up the batter from the boxed mix.

You pour a little batter into each of the mini pancake molds and watch for them to come away from the side a little as they start to turn golden brown underneath. They also bubble up a little just like regular pancakes and pikelets do. I love that smell of batter cooking.

It’s easy and fun flipping the little pancakes over, as the non-stick surface of the mini pancake maker works very well. It just needs a little spray of oil every few batches or so.

What makes these mini pancakes extra yummy is that they are a little soft and puffy in the middle. I was also pleased to discover they aren’t too sweet either – boxed pancake mixes can often be overly sweet, which is silly when you think about it, as you’d want to eat the pancakes with sweet accompaniments like syrup, jam or ice cream.

I don’t know how these compared to real poffertjes made by Dutch people who’d actually know what they’re meant to be like, but they were delicious. We ate lots and lots of these little pancakes for afternoon tea, some with maple syrup, some with butter, some with strawberry jam, some with kaya (or a combination of those!). It was quite hard to stop eating them! One box/one recipe makes around 150 mini pancakes! Juji and Jay took some home and I had some for dessert after dinner that evening, and then more for breakfast the next day. And the next day. I wasn’t worried I’d be sick of them by the time we had out Christmas brunch because I love pancakes and don’t think I eat them often enough. :D