New Year's Day Champagne Pancakes

Don’t pour your leftover Champagne down the drain!!! These Champagne Pancakes are just what you need for brunch on New Year's Day.

Start the new year with a stack of fluffy Champagne pancakes. These pancakes get their lightness from champagne, the carbonation helps to aerate the batter as well as alter its acidity - resulting in delicious cloud-like pancakes.

Now that the science class is out of the way, here’s how you make them!

Ingredients

2 ½ cups self-raising flour

1/3 cup (75g) caster sugar

2 eggs

400ml buttermilk

200ml Champagne

50g butter, melted

Method

1. Sift flour and sugar into a large bowl.

2. In another bowl, lightly whisk eggs, buttermilk and melted butter.

3. Gradually whisk the buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture until a smooth batter forms.

4. Pour the champagne into the batter and gently fold the mixture until just combined. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

5. Heat a frying pan over medium heat and lightly spray with cooking oil.

6. Once hot, drop ½ cup of batter into the centre of the frying pan. Cook until bubbles appear on the surface, then carefully flip to cook the other side until it is lightly browned. Remove and set aside. Repeat with the remaining batter.

Serve topped with strawberries and maple syrup, or your other favourite toppings.

Tip: If the mixture is too runny and your pancakes are not as puffy as you would like, sift a little more flour into your batter and gently fold it to combine.