One of our Christmas traditions is themed pancakes from Christmas Eve through to Boxing Day. I usually try to come up with three different designs, mainly because I love the looks of surprise and delight on my kids’ faces when they see what Christmas character or theme they are getting on their plate. This year I thought I would switch things up, and trialed this Grinch Pancake. Despite the colour of the pancakes, they were very well received.
Ingredients you will need
- Pancake mix – I used Countdown’s Buttermilk Pancake Mix
- Green food dye – I used food gel to get a really vibrant look, but you may wish to use only a little or stick with liquid food dye if your children are hesitant about their food being weird colours.
- Strawberries – thinly sliced
- Banana – thinly sliced
- Black Writing Icing
- Soft sugar pearls – I used two pink ones
Recipe for Grinch pancakes
Follow the instructions on the pancake mix pack and add the food dye before shaking up your pancake mixture. Cook your pancakes. Misshapen ones are fine as you will be needing to cut some into hat shapes anyway. Once the pancakes are cooked, you will need to put them aside fro a bit to allow them to cool slightly. This is so the icing doesn’t melt right off the Grinch’s face. Then once the pancake is cool to the touch, it’s time to plate!
Place one round pancake on a plate, and this will be the Grinch’s face. Then cut another pancake into a hat shape. Place this on top of the face pancake. You can then layer strawberry slices onto the hat, so it looks like a nice red Santa hat. Top the strawberry hat with a banana pompom. Then cut a 1/3 of two banana slices and arrange these like slightly angry eyes on the face. With the writing icing, add a big smile and attach the sugar pearls to the bananas for the banana eye pupils.
These pancakes were really yummy, and they looked amazing. My kids were really thrilled with the trial ones. If your child is a little sensitive to scary things, you can make the pancake colour less green and the eyes more sympathetic as well.
Having cool Christmas traditions not only helps make Christmas special, it also helps cement that sense of belonging and family. Do you have breakfast food traditions at your place for Christmas?
This article was written by Kym Moore. Kym is a working mum of two, and occasional blogger. Fancies herself a writer, when she isn’t editing her kids’ vlogs or running their social media at Baby Likes Cake. Follow them on Facebook and YouTube.
That is so cute! And I love that you use fresh fruit! My kids have been asking for pancakes all day, I will do this for them in the morning!
How cool. What an awesome tradition. I do not make pancakes nearly as much as I should, mostly because it tmakes such a huge amcount of effort and makes so much mess hahaha. Plus my kids don’t quite appreciate them and usually only eat half a pancake at the most.
But I think I will make more of an effort to do them on special occasions because these look so cool
Haha they are so cool – my 5 year old would’nt eat them though as they are green! LOL. We did have Christmas pancakes on Christmas Day which was awesome, whipped cream, fruit and maple syrup yum! 🙂
I was surprised my kids ate him, only because they sometimes have an issue with food that is coloured ‘wrong’. But I have been slowly making pancakes in rainbow colours lately, so they are getting use to the vibrant weirdness on their plates!
What a cool idea I would have never thought to make grinch’s ever but will do and have all the ingredients to do this as well I can’t wait to see the kids faces