Apple pancakes

Serves 4-6

(Jason Lowe)

Pancakes are great to serve at any time of the day and they are especially popular at kids' tea-time. You can vary the fillings, but I've just used apples here as home cooks often run out of ideas for ways in which to use apples in puddings. You could also add a few blackberries to this as there are still plenty of them around. You can serve these with ice cream, thick cream, mascarpone or a couple of good knobs of butter.

1kg cooking apples, peeled, cored and roughly chopped
About 100g sugar (or more if the apples are tart)
250ml milk
120g flour
1 medium egg
1tsp caster sugar
Vegetable oil for frying

Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the apples and sugar and cook over a medium heat for 8-10 minutes, stirring every so often, until they are nicely mashed. Taste them and add more sugar if necessary. Remove from the heat and put to one side.

To make the pancakes, whisk the flour, the egg and the teaspoon of sugar together with one-third of the milk until smooth. Whisk in the remaining milk; strain if necessary.

Heat a non-stick frying pan, rub with a little vegetable oil, then pour in a little pancake mix, tilting the pan immediately so that the mixture spreads evenly. Turn after one minute with a spatula or pallet knife. Continue with the rest of the mix. If you are making lots, make them in advance and stack them up between greaseproof paper then re-heat in the oven for a minute before serving.

To serve, re-heat the apple mixture and either spoon down the centre of the pancakes and roll up; or spoon in the centre and fold in half then half again to form a triangle. Re-heat in the oven for a couple of minutes then dust with icing sugar and serve.