Salty and sweet flavours work surprisingly well together so we teamed them up to make one delicious pancake topping - once you see how easy it is, you won't be able to resist.
These salted caramel pancakes pack in so many flavour and texture contrasts. Sweet and salty, hot and cold and smooth and crunchy. They're an absolute delight.
Salted caramel is a relatively new flavour combination, created in 1977 when a French pastry chef in Brittany was trying to create something that stood out from the competition. Brittany is famous for sea salt, so he experimented and a classic was born. It's hard to imagine today, when salted caramel is so ubiquitous. This pancake topping is delicious and versatile - it goes well on any kind of pancakes. We've use our classic pancake recipe (opens in new tab) here, but swap it out to American or Scotch if you prefer them - you can't go wrong.
Ingredients
Pancakes of your choice
Tin of ready made caramel
Fine sea salt
Vanilla ice cream
Pretzels
WEIGHT CONVERTER
grams
to
cups
Method
Add 1 tsp of salt to 4tbsp of caramel and stir together. Add more salt to taste (the flavour will get more intense the longer it's left to blend so make sure it's only slightly salty at this stage.)
Make up a batch of pancakes and leave to cool slightly.
Spoon the ice cream and the salted caramel onto the pancake and decorate with pretzels.
Top tips for making salted caramel pancakes
Don't go too heavy on the salt - the key to this flavour combination is balance. You should be able to taste the salt - it shouldn't get lost in the sweetness, but it shouldn't overwhelm it either. Use good sea salt, not fine table salt, which has a harsher flavour.
Swap the ice cream for some fresh cream if you prefer. Either whipped or pouring cream work well and both add a lovely richness to the caramel.
Octavia Lillywhite is an award-winning food and lifestyle journalist with over 15 years of experience. With a passion for creating beautiful, tasty family meals that don’t use hundreds of ingredients or anything you have to source from obscure websites, she’s a champion of local and seasonal foods, using up leftovers and composting, which, she maintains, is probably the most important thing we all can do to protect the environment.
Easy pancakes
