As promised I kicked off the school year trying to add a bit of variety into my kids school lunches... it started with sandwiches with goat's cheese and fig (a bit more exotic than usual) and some cherry tomatoes, slices of cucumber (cucumber crisps as my son calls them!) and even a few alfalfa sprouts... verdict: lunch boxes completely empty at end of day!

So time to start a real experiment!

First fact.... I am rubbish at making pancakes! Many people I know think they are the easiest thing in the world to whizz up for a kid's snack, but for me I have nightmares of sticky pans and pancrumbs rather than pancakes...

So I did not start on the easy path...

The recipe is fairly straightforward and explained in full here....

100g buckwheat flour, 200ml water, 3 eggs, 2 handfulls of fresh spinach and a pinch of salt all mixed together easily in my blender

Give it a quick whizz and....

I melted some coconut oil (but you can also use butter) in the pan and started optimistically to make the first pancake the size of the pan base...

All looking good no! But alas either the pan wasn't hot enough or I was too impatient or (most likely) I am just not so good at pancakes... it turned out like this :-(

Pancrumbs!!! Tasted good.... but what a mess!

OK... re-think! So for the sake of all the pancake batter I still had left, I reduced my expectations and just put one ladle of the mixture in the pan and made some smaller pancakes

Which gradually got to look a bit better...

For the lunch we decided they needed something a bit moist with them so we opted for a spread of homemade pesto, some goats cheese (because the boys love it) and some thinly sliced tomatoes and rolled them up...

Verdict: If making pancakes is child's play for you... then go for it - it's a great recipe. You can make them a day in advance. I imagine they also freeze okay but maybe then harder to roll. My oldest son liked the change and managed well to eat it (5 years) - for the little one (2,5) it was a bit messy!

If you are like me and pancakes are not your thing.... I'll be testing out more alternatives as the school year rolls on!

If anyone has that amazing pancake tip to help me next time.... please share!