Feeling brave? Try Colm O’Gorman’s pancake recipe

Want something different to sugar and lemon this Pancake Tuesday? Try Colm O'Gorman's fancy pancakes instead.

Colm O'Gorman serves up two alternatives to traditional crepes. Pictures: Mary Browne

Irish people will eat more than twelve million pancakes on Pancake Tuesday. On average each of us will tuck into 2.55 pancakes. We will use more than one and a half million eggs and one hundred and fifty thousand kilos of flour in the process.

A survey a few years ago found that a third of us do not know the origins of Pancake Tuesday. The tradition of eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday goes back more than a thousand years. It originates from a tradition of using up foods that could not be eaten during Lent due to fasting. Eggs, fats, sugar, and other indulgences that could not be eaten during the forty days of Lent were used up in one last moment of pleasure before the deprivation of Lent.