Today Sophie had to teach Annabelle some mathematics, so she very politely suggested I visit Cook to ask for afternoon tea to be sent to our tower (please).

Well – !

It is a very long walk in our cold mountain castle from our tower to the Kitchens, so when Cook saw me she said

“Why don’t you help me make your pikelets, to keep you nice and warm by the stove-top?”

So we did and they were yummy. I did burn the first three pikelets I made – Cook gave me more jam to hide the burned bit taste.

Then we had to make some more pikelets to take back to Sophie and Annabelle. Sophie hadn’t really noticed how long I’d been gone, but Annabelle had because she wolfed down her pikelets and asked

“Why aren’t you eating any pikelets?”

So then Sophie knew I’d had lots already (she always knows everything), and she suggested I write down the recipe for you (because Sophie says “it is nice to share” :

Recipe makes 12 large, high pikelets

1 cup flour (Cook used buckwheat, you can use plain flour too)

1 rounded teaspoon of baking powder

1 heaped tablespoon of sugar

1 egg

50g butter

½ cup of milk (maybe more if you use a dairy alternative, like coconut milk, yum)

1 teaspoon Vanilla essence (if you like it).

Now you have to ask an adult or experienced cook to help you with these steps (because pikelets need a hot stove top, and stove tops need adults near them):

Sieve the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl;

Make a well in the middle of the sieved dry ingredients (Cook says “this means you make a hole in the middle of the dry ingredients which you pour the wet ingredients into”);

Break the egg into a cup to keep eggshells out of your dry ingredients;

Melt in a frying pan the 50g butter over a medium heat (be careful not to burn the butter);

Pour the egg from the cup and ½ of the milk into the mixing bowl’s well;

Pour the melted butter from your frying pan into your mixing bowl’s well;

Put the frying pan back onto your stove to stay warm;

Mix the wet ingredients into your dry ingredients with a big wooden spoon;

Add the vanilla extract (if you like it);

Now slowly add more milk into your mixture (Cook says “it’s now called a batter”) until the mixture is sloppy, falls off a spoon if you pull the spoon out of the mixture but the mixture is not runny like milk is runny. Cook says “so the batter is more like a cake mixture than a biscuit or cookie mixture”;

Use a tablespoon to pour the mixture into your hot pan. You can make any shape you like, even letters of your name! I like making cloud pikelet shapes;

When you can see little bubbles saying hello to you in the top of each pikelet, use an egg slice to turn each pikelet over, to brown the other side;

When you and your adult are happy that your pikelets look cooked, you remove the pikelets from the frying pan and put them on a tea towel (which you then fold over them, like they’re hiding from you). Cook says “this is so the pikelets keep their moisture and freshness while you are busy cooking the other pikelets”. Cook is very clever;

Keep cooking new pikelets;

When you have cooked as many pikelets as you can possibly eat at once, turn off your stove top, then sit down with some butter and jam to enjoy your yummy pikelets!

What I didn’t tell either Sophie or Annabelle was that Starnberg turned up in the middle of my pikelet lesson, just after Cook accidentally placed a damp log on the big fire, which almost put the big fire out. So Starnberg had to puff his fire to make our fire breathe again!

Now even Cook can see how helpful Starnberg can be – when he needs to be! Cook was much happier once the big fire was breathing again and then I gave her one of my pikelets and made her sit by the fire and she seemed quite calm. For Cook. Sophie says Cook is very busy and important in our cold mountain castle because she feeds EVERYBODY!

Well – except for Starnberg. And only because he eats things raw we don’t eat raw. Oh, and he doesn’t really live here in our cold mountain castle, he lives in The Other Country mostly.

My first unburned pikelet! Then I put jam all over it…