Moroccan Beghrir Pancakes

If you love crumpets for breakfast then these gorgeous little Moroccan Beghrir might just tickle your tastebuds with their soft spongy texture and honeycomb appearance. More importantly, beghrir are much easier to make than crumpets. It's simply a matter of blending a batter together and then frying little pikelet sized rounds. And nothing beats the honey butter syrup lavishly poured over the top, the holes soaking up the goodness. Eat these with your hands in bed (although you may need to watch out for sticky sheets!).

Beghrir or Baghrir are often eaten for breakfast but also as an afternoon snack as well as for Iftar (fast breaking during Ramadan). Traditionally they were time consuming to make but this recipe given to me by the lovely Eva from Kitcheninspirations makes fast and easy work of these moreish little pancakes. She was kind enough to give me the recipe when I saw them on a facebook post. And did I mention honey and butter syrup? And if you don't use the honey butter syrup (you can serve them with maple syrup) and fry these with a dab of coconut oil then they are completely vegan too.

Dear Reader I want to thank you very much for your well wishes on last Sunday's post. Miss America in particular loved reading your comments. Tomorrow we will visit him in hospital and I will bring a big box of these.

This past week I'd chat with him by email and we came to the conclusion that he needed some really good, proper food. He said, "Did I say that the food here was okay? I must've had severe brain damage! Tonight's "apricot chicken" bore a tenuous relationship with either. But there were two standout features of the sticky date pudding. 1. It was indeed somewhat sticky and 2. I was eating it well within it's use-by date!".

So tomorrow we will bring him a tasty Sunday lunch starting with warm beghrir with honey syrup and then whatever he wants after that! It will be an unusual Sunday lunch but hey we like it that way...

So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever had a hospital picnic? And have you ever tried these beghrir before? Do you like crumpets?

Moroccan Beghrir Pancakes

Ingredients:

• 120g/4ozs of fine semolina
• 120g/4ozs. plain all purpose flour
• 50g/1.7ozs. almond meal
• 1 tbsp granulated sugar
• 1 tsp yeast
• 500 mL (2 cups) warm water
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt

Honey syrup

• 75g/2.65ozs. butter
• 150ml/5ozs. Honey
• 75ml/2.65ozs. water

Step 1 - Place all ingredients except for the salt in a bowl and blend well with a stick blender (you can also do this in a blender or food processor). Cover and stand in a warm place for 30 minutes. Stir the batter again and add in the salt.

Step 2 - Have three trays or large platters ready (the beghrir stick together when warm so you can't pile them on top of each other). Heat the frying pan-ideally a silver dollar pan but all I had was a crepe pan. The pan needs to be hot enough to produce the bubbles but not too hot. I kept my pan on heat 7 out of 10 where 10 is the hottest. Using a small ladle or a 4.5 cm (2.75") ice cream scoop, scoop some batter into the pan (you can lightly butter it) and allow to bubble. You will not flip these and they will cook from the bottom up producing bubbles. Cook until the batter is no longer wet.

Step 3 - To make honey syrup, gently heat the three ingredients together and whisk to combine.

Beghrir freeze well-just freeze in a single layer separated by parchment