HOW TO MAKE PANCAKE ART

What We Learned From Doing The Pancake Art Challange At Home.

Tips and tricks for doing the pancake art challenge in your own home.

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What You'll Need

Pancake mix (your favorite brand)

Squeeze bottles

Food coloring Flat skillet / Spatula

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Get all the clumps out with a sieve. This helps prevent the nozzle of your bottles from clogging. We learned this one the hard way on our first goa 'round. We used one really large bowl to mix 8 cups of batter before sending it through the sieve and then off to be colored and poured in the (7) individual bottles. The easiest way to get the pancake batter into the squeeze bottle is to mix up your colors in bowls that have (has) a pouring spout. The spout makes the transfer process simple and practically mess-free. Just don’t pour too fast, or you’ll wish you were over a sink. Which is probably a good idea anyhow.

DO NOT PUT PLASTIC BOTTLES ON HOT SURFACE.

Be color smart If possible use gel food color. This way you can get rich colors without compromising consistency. Cut down on dishes by designing colors that can be stacked. For instance, here I made yellow, then added blue to the leftover yellow (to make green) so I could cut down on having a bowl for yellow and green. The squirt bottles are at Walmart for around .97c each. The squirt bottles hold around 2 cups of batter each. If you didn't have funds to splurge on the bottles you can always recycle an empty ketchup bottle or the like. Just be sure to clean it out really well first. You can control the flow of the batter per color by trimming the nozzle more, you can also purchase smaller squeeze bottles if you want to get really fancy.

Keep heat low. Another lesson we learned the hard way. Something around 125* F seems ideal for our specific

Remember the colors you put down first will be the colors at the forefront of your design, if you want a solid background or if you are making emojis that are predominantly yellow - you want to add the yellow LAST. Always add your background color last. One other important tip … remember that some letters and numbers don’t look the same backward and forwards. So, in order to serve them correctly (the first side cooked is typically the “serving” side that faces up) … you must use your very best skills to put the letters or numbers onto the griddle backward (so they’re forwards once flipped and served). It doesn't take long to get the hang of it. It took me some thought and practice though. Draw an outline.

Before laying out floating components for the front view, draw an outline. This helps to create an area your batter won't pour out of keeping it clean, with defined edges. This section starts cooking first so it acts as a wall keeping the rest of your batter contained. You can even lookup some videos on youtube to see how the professionals do them and get inspiration. Write a bunch of ideas on strips of paper and pull them from a hat.

You must add the eyes, tears, and mouth before you cover the back with yellow batter to get this effect

Most importantly we learned that the family that plays together stays together. This was fairly inexpensive, extremely fun, and brought out creative energy in all of us. I highly recommend you and your family enjoy your own round of the pancake art challenge. Next, we are going to try adding packages of Kool-Aid to flavor the batter. Stay Tuned!