Ah E's Pancakes

I've been wanting to make these pancakes since the day KK told me he missed 'Ah Long pancake'. For the less enlightened, this 'Ah Long pancake' is actually your traditional peanut pancake or 'min jiang kueh', creatively modified (by Ah Long, I presume). The same pancake batter is used but instead of peanuts fillings, cheese, egg, sausages, ham, tuna and even sweet corn is used. The pancake is served open and cut into wedges like a pizza. We never thought that 'min jiang kueh' would taste nice with such 'radical' fillings but once we tried it, we were converted. It is actually quite nice with its savoury toppings. KK's favourite is the one with cheese and sausage and we used to drive down to Tampines' S11 foodcourt to buy it for him.


After some research and preparation, I finally made it today. (applause!)


I googled, found the recipe from Baking Cottage's blog (http://mybakingcottage.blogspot.com/2007/12/min-jiang-kueh.html) and started to gather all my ingredients gradually since 1 week ago. The ingredients may seem rather standard, but for me, I had to start from scratch, buying flour, baking soda, yeast etc. I also had to look for the right size crepe pan as both the pans I had were either too big or too small. I finally bought a 20 cm non-stick frypan from Big W.




I made two types of pancakes, the traditional one with peanuts for myself and hubby and the 'Ah Long' type for KK when he came back from school today. My first attempt and I am quite satisfied with the results. The pancakes were fluffy and had a nice aroma. It tasted almost like those they sell in Singapore.





As for the peanuts, I had a big bag of it left over from my glutinous rice 'project'. The day before, I patiently shelled them, then pan-fry them in their skin, remove the skins before grating them in the blender. Much as I don't want to over-grate them into fine peanut powder, I think I made the mistake of putting all the peanuts, which was too much, into the blender all at once. Some of the nuts were uncut while some were already being grated into powder state. Finally after shaking them around, all got chopped but the texture was quite fine. Nonetheles, the smell of the roasted peanuts was awesome! Luckily, the next day, I found a packet of chopped peanuts in Coles. So I mixed them together to get the crunchy feel.





For KK's pancake, I simply pour the batter into the pan, then when it was almost set, I placed a slice of cheese and scattered some chopped shaved ham over it. Cover it for a few minutes till the cheese melts, and it's done! Although I omitted the egg (I think the original version had them), the taste was authentic enough and my heart beamed with joy as I watch my dear son enjoy it thoroughly.

Now that I've started with all these baking ingredients, I guess I will be looking out for more recipes to bake and make.