Scottish Pancakes – Sweet, fluffy, delicious pancakes served with honey and berries.
Hi-yo! Happy start to the week, friends!! We’re welcoming this beautiful Monday with a stack of Scottish (uhh, ha?) Pancakes!
Do you know how many loops, hoops, and whatnot I had to go through to get this recipe? MANY!
Lemme tell you how all this got started.
One word. Pinterest.
Sometime last year I saw this beautiful stack of pancakes in my Pinterest feed and I was drawn in immediately. I was ready to make it, eat it, love it!
As I clicked over, giddy as can be, I was led to a site that had me click over to another site, to then click over to another and then another… arrrrgh. Darn you, internet! Help a girl out! I almost LOST it! But, fortunately, one more click did the trick. Finally, I had the recipe.
Orrrrr did I? muahahaha (<—- I’m doing Dr. Evil’s pinky-to-mouth gesture.)
As soon as I started to work on said recipe in my kitchen, I thought, this looks way too familiar… and it was! I had made that recipe once before and it was La Fuji Mama’s recipe for Japanese Hotcakes. Delicious hotcakes, by the way, but the pancakes I was looking for were not those. Back to the drawing board.
Are you sick of my story, yet?? Think about how I felt! Just work with me here.
Several hundred google-searches later, I found what I was looking for.
FYI: “very tall fluffy pancakes” = 74,800 google results.
SCOTTISH PANCAKES
Soon after nailing it down, I called my 1/4-Scotch uncle to ask about these pancakes. The dude gave me the recipe in less than 2 seconds. He knew exactly what I was talking about! He’s also a trained chef, so this question worked out in his favor.
However, his recipe was all in grams and he lost me. When I asked about translating all that to cups, he said, “Bakers work with grams“.
Okey, dokey, then… Good thing I’m not a trained baker!
Buuut, I had no choice! Everywhere I looked for Scottish Pancakes, it was all in grams. So I whooped out my kitchen scale and got to work. While all that worked out perfectly, and the pancakes came out so deliciously tall, I still was not satisfied with the height.
Therefore, my dear friends, I did the next best thing. I whooped out my biscuit cutter, I then poured the batter inside the cutter and VOILA! The tallest pancakes in all the world are right before your eyes! Thus, if you are not satisfied with the tall pancakes that this batter produces, bring out the biscuit cutter. It works wonders. Obvi.
I hope you enjoyed my forever-long story. Mwah!
ENJOY!
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Scottish Pancakes
Ingredients
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- pinch of salt
- 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons milk
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup Vegetable oil, for cooking
- honey or maple syrup, for topping
- fresh berries, for topping
Instructions
- Combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl and mix until well incorporated.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, vanilla, and melted butter.
- Pour the eggs mixture into the flour mixture and stir just until incorporated; do not overmix. The batter should be thick and a little lumpy; if it is too thick to work with, add a bit of milk. Set the batter aside for 10 minutes.
- Heat a heavy-bottomed, non-stick pan over low-medium heat and coat it with oil. DO NOT use all the oil at once; pour enough to coat the bottom of the pan.
- Drop the batter, 1/4 cup per pancake, into the pan.
- Cook until the first side is golden brown and the top surface forms bubbles.
- Flip and continue to cook until golden brown on all sides.
- Add more oil as needed.
- Serve immediately, drizzled with honey or maple syrup and fresh berries.
Nutrition
Nutritional info is an estimate and provided as courtesy. Values may vary according to the ingredients and tools used. Please use your preferred nutritional calculator for more detailed info.
My kids don’t have school today, and my 9 year old made us this breakfast with minimal help from me. We just used a bit less cinnamon, about 1/2 tsp. We all loved it, and I could tell he took pride in his work. Thanks!
That’s wonderful! I am very glad you and your family enjoyed it!! THANK YOU! 🙂
They were pretty decent, I tweaked the recipe a little. I used veg oil and pure Mexican vanilla powder. I had no issues with it thickening. It’s pretty much a regular pancake but with cinnamon.
I’m not sure what makes these Scottish. They are good but I’m at a loss for the name.
I had high hopes but this was Ultimately a flop.
Batter was absolutely not thick enough. I usually keep away from recipes that don’t use grams but he’ll why not try.
Grams allow for consistency. Cups and tablespoons can vary greatly resulting in different results in baking. It’s not something reserved for professionals.
Hi, I am Scottish and often make Scottish pancakes (or Drop Scones the actual Scottish name). Cinnamon and Vanilla NEVER EVER goes in them!! Also you never use a biscuit cutter to make them tall. They are supposed to be flattish actually. I think you should re-name this recipe, as it’s just not right.
These were SO good! The cinnamon made them so AMAZING. They were so thick, too! I made then 4 new year breakfast, and they were the perfect start to 2019! Thx!!
Just NO. Scottish Pancakes are NOT tall like that at all. They are much flatter and eaten with butter and jam. My Granny and Grandpa never made them this way nor do any of the bakeries in Scotland. I have eaten Scottish Pancakes all my life these are definitely not them. Sorry.
I think you were looking for German pancakes
German pancakes are baked…
Maryanne is correct. Scottish pancakes are eaten at foo temperature with butter and or jam for tea. My Scottish cousin wanted to go to an American pancake restaurant that had opened in Inverness for pancakes because they were such a novelty. That doesn’t mean these pancakes are not excellent only that they they do not resemble or are eaten like Scottish pancakes.
I agree with you! My grandmother was from Scotland and her Scottish pancakes were not thick, but thin and we ate them with butter and/or jam when we had tea!
Please correct the flour ingredient measurement in the recipe so that it correctly reads 3/4 cup flour plus one tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons instead of 1 cup plus one tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons. If I hadn’t read the comments, I would have made the mistake others mentioned. Thank you
Thank YOU, Joan, for catching that!! Have a wonderful weekend!
Thanks!! I am super happy with the grams and milliliters!! Now I don’t have to look it up on the internet!
I think you made a typo concerning the flour. It says 200g of flour to get 1-1/2 cups, and 300ml (which can be converted to 300g) to get 1-1/4 cup of milk. The conversion to cups is might be what’s throwing people off because 200g is 3/4 of a cup and plus the tablespoon and 2 teaspoons. The conversion of the milk is accurate, but It looks a little confusing for those who don’t know whether to have more milk than flour, or vice versa. People have probably been getting dense pancakes from adding too much flour. So from your experience with the recipes, Is it better to have more milk than flour, an equal amount of both, or more flour than milk?
Hi Elizabeth!! You know, I think you might just have solved the mystery that I haven’t been able to figure out!! I use a kitchen scale, always, and that is why I never even thought to look at what I typed up. Thank YOU soooo much for your input! I SO appreciate it. The recipe that I have from my uncle is 200 grams flour and 300 ml milk. That is always what I go by and it works out perfectly. I just couldn’t figure out why everyone else was having a problem. :-/ I wish the whole universe would stick to cups and tablespoons. 😉 All bakers are about to kill me. haha
grams are so easy .. for us cups are very confusing 🙂
the taste of these pancakes is lovely but I don t get them very tall.. 1 cm max. what do I make wrong?
cheers from Switzerland 🙂
Thanks for sharing! I was super excited to make these pancakes. Unfortunately, they didn’t turn out the way that I expected. I was super surprised that there was no acidity (buttermilk of yogurt) to react with the baking powder in a “fluffy” pancake recipe. I followed your recipe exactly (minus using a biscuit cutter), and I got pancakes that were anything but fluffy…they were super dense and darn near impenetrable! When I was cooking them, I didn’t even see any bubbles come through because they were so thick.
They were still edible and pretty ok in flavor, just not what I was expecting. Not sure where I went wrong…
Mine turned out to be very dense
Hi Cierra! That’s pretty much the big difference I think in American Pancakes versus Scottish; they don’t use buttermilk. In as far as why the pancakes came out dense, I can only guess and say that maybe you overmixed? Overmixing results in tough, rubbery, flat pancakes. That’s just a guess. I’m sure you did everything according to the recipe, but perhaps you now know you’re not a fan of Scottish Pancakes! 😀
baking powder doesn’t need an acid — baking soda does. If they were flat, perhaps in addition to overmixing, you might have “old” baking powder. If you google these items (the recipe) you will note that there are MANY recipes that use this much baking powder. These are NOT American pancakes. Look for something different. Good luck in being open-minded and seek new and exciting things to eat!! I love what other cultures bring to the table. 🙂
These were just o.k., I was not impressed. I think people should be honest when commenting on a recipe, this way you don’t waste your time and money.
I’m sorry they didn’t meet your standards. Keep in mind, though, we all have different tastes, and judging by all the comments on this recipe, I think you will find a mix of good and bad. Have a great weekend!
Hmmm…yuummm! I just made these gluten free this morning and they were a success! Not as fluffy as your beautiful picture :), but they had potential! Katerina, I’m loving your blog <3
Hi Michaela! That is awesome! Can you share with me your GF recipe? I’d love to know! 😀
Hi. As the first reviewer mentioned, you have listed “1” egg in your original translated recipe however in a reply to another reviewer you say your uncle’s exact recipe called for 2 eggs. If someone doesn’t read the reviews before starting I think they will end up very unhappy with their results. Hoping you can correct it.
Thank you, Lorrie, for pointing that out! I am pretty sure that I updated the recipe a while back, but you never know. Sometimes, when we have to update our websites or blogs and recipe cards, things get lost in the shuffle. Again, thank you for chiming in! Have a great weekend ahead!
Hello: It appears there is a typographical error in your recipe: the ingredients lists “1 large egg”. In the instructions this is what is typed: “Combine eggS and milk”. Eggs PLURAL. Please email me as I won’t be back to the c omputer for sometime. Please correct the error. I whisked one more egg an combined it with the very very thick batter. It now has a workable and batterlike texture it lacked before. Thank you. Alison
this are the best pancakes ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! finally fluffy ones and super good .thank you and thank your uncle. i followed the recipe and they turned out perfect, no more regular pancakes. this are no 1 in the world.
Hi i tried this recipe but It didnt work. The pancakes went flat and too plain. Either not enough flour or too much milk?
HI Jenny! I honestly don’t know why the turned out flat. But I’m really sorry that they did. 🙁
About the “plain” part; you can just add whatever fixings you want – chocolate chips, dried fruits, nuts, more cinnamon, etc…