For any of the non-Brits among us, Pancake Day is another of our weird and wonderful traditions that basically involves being able to gorge ourselves on tasty treats. But if you think there’s nothing more to the day than just flipping a few pancakes, you can think again.

This brilliant day, also known as Shrove Tuesday, is always the day before Ash Wednesday, the first day of lent. And lent is that weird time of year when Christians (or people who need a good excuse for a diet) give up something they love (think all your favourite things like biscuits, sweets, chocolate and crisps) during the run-up to Easter. This symbolises deprivation and sacrifice and is meant to make us sympathise with Jesus – although I’m not really sure how giving up Ben & Jerry’s for a month can make anyone feel a bit more holy but that’s a completely different topic.

Before lent, people would use up everything in their cupboards and get rid of any tempting treats and what better way to do this that with a good old pancake.

Making the perfect pancake

I’m going to make this simple for you:

The ingredients

100g of plain flour

2 large eggs

300ml of milk

1 tbsp of oil

A pinch of salt

What to do:

• Whisk all your ingredients together, preferably with a hand held whisk, put a nob of butter in your frying pan and wait until it’s really hot.
• Ladle a spoon full of the batter in your pan and swirl it around really quickly so it forms a nice thin layer across the pan.
• After about 2-3 mins give it a flip and hey presto, you have yourself a pancake. Simples.

 There are a couple of rules for making the perfect pancake:

• You must make your own batter and you can’t get that stuff from a packet – that’s just cheating.
• Your frying pan needs to be super duper hot.
• The first pancake you make will look like crap and you’ll probably feed it to your dog but don’t worry, they get better.
• The best pancakes are fried in butter.
• Don’t flip your pancake until it comes away from the pan really easily.
• There are recipes out there on how to make ‘healthy pancakes’ – ignore them all. Make the most out of Pancake Day and make every one as buttery and sweet as you can.
• No matter how much ice cream and melted chocolate you have, you can’t beat the traditional lemon juice and sugar pancakes.

And now all you need to decide on is the topping, so tell us, what’s your favourite pancake topping?

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