{my childhood food festival}
Every year in the small town of Wepener in the Free State where I grew up there was always a big farm show. For all the “tannies en omies” in the district and surrounding towns, it was always a large and important affair.

The fair was a place to show off your best livestock or your best cookies, melktert or baked goods with everyone competing for that treasured blue rosette. For me, the show was something to look forward to – it was my food festival … like the Taste of Cape Town and the Good Food and Wine show today.

{cinnamon pancake}
In the food hall, all the tannies were there standing next to their gas stoves in their frilly and colourful aprons, cooking everything from babotie, curry offal to jaffles and pancakes. Well, what is a food festival without the traditional pancake and cinnamon sugar?

Yes, the cinnamon sugar was sprinkled by the tablespoon full onto the “just-out-of-the-pan” fluffy slightly-burnt-pancakes. These featherlite, rolled up pancakes were just treat.

I remember those happy childhood memories, returning from the show late in the evening, climbing into bed with a full stomach and a happy and contented smile. I was filled to the brim with those delicious pancakes, but … the pancakes and the food fair also filled and fed my soul. The same way food feeds my soul today.

{vintage large quantity pancake recipe}
Today I want to share tannie Dollie van Heerden’s age old large quantity recipe Wepener pancakes. I found her recipe in an original copy of “Beproefde Resepte” (Proven Recipes), a local selection of recipes typed up by my mom for the school, so many years ago.

Tannie Dollie van Heerden’s tried and tested pancake recipe
I am not going to bother with converting the old measures of weight with the current metric system…as they say…you can “just google it!”.

Ingredients
30 cups of water
30 eggs
5 lb flour
1 bottle of cooking oil
3 tablespoons of salt
1 ounce of baking powder

Method
Whisk the eggs together well. Add water, little by little to the eggs whisking all the while.
Sift the flour into the egg mixture. Add the salt and keep mixing until all the flour, water and eggs have mixed together. Lastly, whisk the cooking oil and baking powder together and pour into hot frying pan. Please note that the oil is only added for the first pancake. Fry until golden brown.