Happy Valentine's Day! Fun Pancake Art Recipe

I contributed a fun pancake art recipe three years ago for a HPB site, but the page is no longer there...so I'm bringing it back here on the blog. Have fun being creative this Valentine's Day...or any other day!

UPDATE: I did a video demo of this recipe for ToTTtv!



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If you're tired of the crass commercialism that surrounds Valentine's Day, and want to express yourself in a simple yet whimsical manner, have a go at quirky pancakes. These are not just cute, but so fun to make. Hopefully your Valentine will be charmed and ask, "How did you do that?"

The secret? Squeeze bottles. Put the pancake mix in there and doodle away!

You can get these easily at dollar stores or supermarkets. They are the same things that chefs use to create sauce dots, squiggles and flourishes to jazz up your plate (and instantly charge a lot more for it too). It's a really cheap but versatile tool.

If you don't have squeeze bottles, you can use piping bags or even just a ziplock bag (snip off the tip of a bottom corner). But I think these bottles are still easier to handle.

So here's what you do.

PANCAKE MIX:

Dry Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

half teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients:

1 cup milk

2 tablespoons melted butter (about 25g)

1 egg

food colouring (optional)

METHOD:

1. Sift all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl

2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg, milk and butter together.

3. Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and whisk until the batter is extremely smooth.

I used a bowl (from my kitchen weighing machine) with a little spout so that it's easier to pour the mixture into the squeeze bottles.

Since I was using two colours, I poured half the mix into one bottle first, before adding a few drops of red food colouring to the remaining batter.

Once you're ready, heat up your frying pan (you won't need to put any oil, as the pancake batter is already oily). Remember to keep the pan at medium heat, or your pancakes may brown too quickly.

Draw anything your heart desires. The Eiffel Tower I did is like a giant A with slightly concave sides and two bridges plus a bottom arch. Here I have little pink dots, but if you want to make hearts, just draw a "v" and the batter will naturally spread to form a heart.

For bigger two-coloured hearts, you can draw the outline first.

And then fill in with the other colour.

Of course, you don't have to stop there. You can draw anything your heart desires! Flowers, animals, Hello Kitty, letters, numbers, shapes, even entire messages!

This is me having fun with my leftover batter. Obviously my drawing skills have some ways to go, but this is just too fun not to try. I hope you'll enjoy doing this as much as I did too.

I have to thank Jim's Pancakes (http://www.jimspancakes.com/) for inspiring this idea. Visit his site to see all the creative things he's done with pancakes, including a Millennium Falcon! His book "OMG Pancakes" is available at the libraries.