Pinwheel pancakes with strawberries and cream cheese

In the midst of all our wintery weather, these pinwheel pancakes with strawberries are a little burst of sunshine in our kitchen.  I was very pleased with how they worked out as I am still no expert at big flat pancakes. 

Having fallen in love with the Pancake Parlours fat fluffy pancakes as a child, I usually make mine high and fluffy.  But every now and again I want pancakes wide and thin enough to wrap up food like a blanket, or as in this case, as pinwheels.

We made these for a weekend breakfast.  They were not quick.  We usually eat pancakes hot off the pan.  These had to cook and have the filling laid out neatly to get the pinwheels round.  Not that mine were quite as round as I had imagined.  (Were the strawberries too chunky?)

The inspiration came from Woolworths supermarket recipe card with pinwheel pancakes with strawberries and cream.  I was so sure they had cream cheese in them that this is what I bought.  I much prefer cream cheese over cream.  But what annoyed me about the supermarket recipe was the use of a pancake mix.  I much prefer to make mine from scratch.  After all not all pancake mixes are equal.  And it is not that hard to mix up some pancakes.

The pancakes I used were adapted from a savoury pancake recipe.   I was quite pleased with how they turned out.  The first one was pretty dodgy after handmixing the batter.  Once I used my hand held blender it made a huge difference to the texture.  I only added 1 tablespoon of sugar and thought it too much at first taste but it worked with the filling, which was not overly sweet.

I really liked the taste of these but they are not really breakfast material.  They are more suited to a fancy brunch, afternoon tea or even dessert.  And there are many possible variations.  I would like to try chocolate pancakes with nutella and strawberries.  Other possibilities are dulce de leche with banana slices.  Sylvia tried a couple of lines of raspberries with the cream cheese spread and it was great.  In fact if you wanted to go really fancy, a few different fillings would be lots of fun. 

More strawberry recipes on Green Gourmet Giraffe:
Strawberry chia seed jam (gf, v)
Strawberry cupcakes
Strawberry crumble (v) 
Strawberry dumplings (v)
Strawberry sushi with chocolate sauce (gf, v)

Pinwheel pancakes with strawberries and cream cheese
An original Green Gourmet Giraffe recipe
Makes about 7-8 pancakes

Pancakes:
350ml milk
1 tbsp lemon
1 tbsp sugar
1 egg
1 tsp olive oil
1 cup wholemeal flour
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Butter, margarine or oil, for frying

Cream Cheese Filling:
1 cup cream cheese, softened
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp icing sugar

200g strawberries

Mix all pancake ingredients together until smooth.  Either mix in blender or mix in a bowl and use a stick blender in the bowl (I did the latter.)  The batter will be very thin.

Cook pancakes:  Warm a frypan to medium to medium high heat.  Melt a small knob of butter and swirl to coat the pan.  Pour 1/3 cup of batter into the pan and swirl around to make a pancake the size of the pan (25-30cm in diameter).  Cook until a few bubbles appear and there is a slight curl to the edges.  Flip over and cook another 1-3 minutes until golden spots appear on the underside.  Cool pancakes before filling.  (This didn't take very long, especially if I put each pancake onto a cold plate rather than a warm stack of pancakes.)

Mix some cream cheese filling by mixing the cream cheese, lemon juice and icing sugar until creamy.  Halve and slice strawberries.  Spread a dessertspoon on cream cheese mixture and the strawberries over a pancake (I needed about 4 strawberries per pancake).  Roll up and chop into 6-8 pieces.  Repeat with as many pancakes as you want (if you don't want them all as pinwheels, they are very good with other fillings).

On the Stereo:
Music from the Kabarett: Various Artists