Czech Desserts - Palacinky - Livingprague.com

Czech Pancakes – Palacinky

I wrote about the original Czech pancakes on the Livanec post which is served with sour cream and fruit puree. This is about the more recognisable flat pancake or crepe. If you want savoury pancakes then look out for something called a “creperie”. The one I’m going to talk about is on the dessert menu of 90% of restaurants in Prague. The thing is that you rarely get just a pancake. It’s the filling that you pay attention to.

czech style folded pancake with cream and chocolate, two grapes and some peach served on a paper plate — One version of Palacinky

So this post is about Palacinky s Zmrzlinu a Ovoce (it sounds like “pala-chin-key smerz-linu ah ovot-say”) and it translates as pancakes with ice-cream and fruit.

In it’s basic form it’s a folded pancake with a cup of ice-cream and some tinned fruit on the inside. The outside should have some sugar dusting and maybe a dribble of chocolate sauce. Every cafe and restaurant in the city will have a different take on the ingredients and presentation.

I had to wait ages for the Palacinky pictured above. It was a little cafe in the Bohemian Switzerland area of the country and this was my pre-climb energy booster. So on the inside it was a double scoop of vanilla ice-cream and the tinned fruit was peach but they also added grapes and because it was August there was a sprinkling of blueberries and raspberries from the forest. Then on the outside as you can see was a generous portion of spray cream topped with chocolate sauce.

empty paper plate with knife and fork and some left over chocolate sauce — That hit the spot!

You’ll find it on most dessert menus but it doesn’t have to be just a dessert. If I’m feeling hungry I’ll just have one of these with a coffee and I’m a happy guy.