I love cooking with kids, although it gets a wee bit frustrating after the first two minutes I must confess but still totally worth it. Those tiny little hands mixing and folding, tongues sticking out, flour smeared all over their faces, taking forever as they make the ultimate move and crack an egg into the bowl.
But their smile keeps me alive. Don’t you just love the feeling when you see an ear-to-ear smile on your kids face. But it usually comes with a price, price that you have to pay with your nerves. But what if I told you that there’s an activity that you and your kids can engage in without you feeling frustrated. A recipe that doesn’t demand you to lose your mind, yes it’s true, you’re not dreaming. Try this awesome pancake art with your kids and keep your sanity, worth the shot,eh!
Since it requires them to be around stove/heat so you just gotta be extra careful. And this recipe will make you and your kids super happy, guaranteed! Verna paisay waapis 🙂
Regular pancakes are fun, healthier versions with banana are even better but this colorful pancake art is over the top, mind blowing. We are too desi to have pancakes for breakfast. We’re the typical desi unday+parathay+chai family. But, my eldest daughter loves to cook, and she loves to make pancakes and waffles, so we get to taste them one weekend or the other. But this pancake art is here to stay in our family I’m guessing. I see myself making these every Sunday as a fun bonding activity between parents and children.
A word of warning:
Since this activity involves young kids to be around stoves and heat, so you as a parent need to be extra cautious. My eldest daughter is wise enough to know how to handle hot pans but her younger siblings don’t. So what we did is:
- We took the room temperature stone flat frying pan, heat it gently and let my younger children draw an outline of the things they wanted to create, once outline is done, we place the pan on stove again, cook it for a minute, take it off again, let it cool down a bit and them let them pour the batter again over them to fill the gaps.
- Make the outline on hot pan myself, cook it for a minute and then take the pan off heat, let it cool down a bit and now the younger ones can fill the gaps.
Both techniques gave the same results, that is super happy kids.
Cooking:
Here are a number of key points that’ll wither make or break your pancake art to please read all the way to the end.
- Flat bottomed pan is a MUST otherwise your drawings will sink into the middle and leave you and the kids unhappy.
- The flat bottomed pan can be stone pan like mine or any non-stick pan so the batter doesn’t stick to the pan.
- Greasing your pan is very important. Don’t throw a teaspoon of butter in there, just melt some butter or take some oil, dip your silicone brush or tissue paper into it and gently run it all over the pan.
- Whisk or even beat with an electric mixer, till there are no lumps in the batter. If your batter is lumpy it will get stuck in the nozzle of the plastic bottles and make you unhappy again.
- Shake well before doodling the batter into the pan.
- Watch the instructions video over and over again, don’t let the batter that is used to fill the gaps sit on pan too long otherwise it’ll ruin the colors.
- All-purpose flour----------------------- 1¾ cup
- Sugar------------------------------------ 1 tbsp
- Baking powder------------------------- 2 tsps
- Salt--------------------------------------- ¼ tsp
- Melted butter--------------------------- 4 tbsp salted or unsalted
- Milk--------------------------------------- 1¼ cup
- Eggs------------------------------------- 2
- vanilla essence------------------------ 1 tsp
- Food colors----------------------------- of your choice, I used yellow, red and black
- Plastic ketchup bottles---------------- 3 for me, as many colors you using
- Melted butter or oil---------------------- as needed to grease the frying pan surface. I used butter.
- In a large clean, dry bowl sift together the dry ingredients, all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt. Add in sugar and set aside.
- Take another bowl and add in all the wet ingredients, eggs, milk, vanilla essence and butter.
- Whisk with hand beater or electric beater till everything mixes together nice and smooth.
- Now pour in the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk or beat with electric beater.
- Mix till everything forms a smooth paste, but don't over mix.
- now divide batter into as many bowls as you like, and add in edible colors. stir till color gets mixed evenly into the batter.
- Now pour the batter into plastic bottles for ketchup or condiments.
- Heat up your flat metal frying pan, I used stone frying pan, it worked great. Any non-stick frying pan that is flat bottomed would do its job great.
- As the pan is slightly hot to touch, not burning hot, gently scrap the surface with butter or oil and spread all around with the help of kitchen tissue paper or silicone brush.
- Squeeze out the pancake batter in whatsoever shape you like and wait for a few seconds, till bubbles start to appear on the surface, and the flip.
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