How to make pancakes with beetroot juice

What a deep, bright raspberry color these unusual pancakes have! They are very original and beautiful, aren't they? Especially if you pour sour cream over them for contrast... Do you know what the natural colour of this recipe is?

No, not tomatoes - it's the tomato juice that makes the pancakes orange. And no berries, although I think cherry juice would have a similar effect. These pancakes with cranberry juice or carrot juice! The useful and bright root vegetables that give Ukrainian borscht its rich burgundy color also color the pancake mixture to delight and surprise the taste buds.

Walnut juice is an excellent natural dye for baking: it can be used to colour batter (as in the recipe for braided pancakes), bread (biscuits) and pancake mix.

Only if you intend to bake it for a long time (bread in the oven), it is better to colour it with boiled beetroot juice to avoid the colour changing from light to brown. Raw beetroot juice is a good way to colour the pancake mix: a short heating does not give it time to change colour, while it retains its original brightness.

Beetroot juice pancakes are thin and tasty, the vegetable juice is not visible, and they are good with both sweet and light fillings.

Ingredients:

For 10 pancakes:

120 ml beetroot juice,

180 ml milk,

2 medium eggs,

2 tablespoons vegetable oil,

50 g butter,

¼ teaspoon salt,

160 grams of flour (1 cup 250 ml).

How to bake:

First, extract the juice. The juicer will not work because of the small amount, it takes a long time to wash it afterwards... but if you want healthy vegetable juice! If you have a sweet, rich color, the juice will be good. Rinse and peel the root, then grate it on a fine grater. Press the grated beetroot through a sieve.

Pour the juice into a bowl, add the eggs, milk, salt and sugar.

Then add the sunflower oil and melted butter.

Sift in the flour.

Mix gently with a spoon and beat with an electric mixer or whisk until smooth. If you whisk it all together, the flour will be spread all over the kitchen. If you mix the flour with a spoon, it won't spread, but will form lumps that the mixer will remove.

Grease a dry and clean pan with sunflower oil - not too much, but evenly (this is only necessary before the first pancake, after that you don't need to grease it - the pancake will be perfectly cooked thanks to the fat in the mixture). Before pouring the first portion of pancake mixture into the pan, heat the pan well. Pour and stir in a circular motion to spread a thin layer of batter over the entire surface.

Cook the beetroot pancakes over a medium-low heat so that they do not overcook, but remain soft and have a nice colour.

If the pancakes are overcooked, they will become crispy, spotty and crunchy at the edges. If you want to soften the finished pancake, brush it with butter as soon as you take it out of the pan and put it with the other pancakes - it will be softer when it is buttered and warm.

Lightly fry one side of the pancake so it browns and is easy to flip - use a spatula to fry it and flip the other side. Fry again until cooked through - some like them crispy, others like them soft - and place on a plate.

This is what a beetroot pancake looks like: festive and colourful!

Beetroot pancakes can be eaten simply with sour cream or honey, salt or sweet cottage cheese, and you can add herbs in the first case and sultanas, prunes, dried blackberries in the second case.

You can cook and freeze the strands and then reheat them and enjoy the pancakes!