How to Make Shaped Pancakes

Want to make breakfast a little more fun? Shaped pancakes are surprisingly easy to make, and you don't need special pancake molds or fancy equipment. All you need is your favorite pancake batter, a couple of inexpensive squeeze bottles, and a little imagination.

Make stars for the first day of school, hearts for Valentine's Day, pumpkins for Halloween, Christmas trees in December, or let your kids request their favorite shapes for a birthday breakfast. Once you know the trick, you can make shaped pancakes for just about any occasion!

Fun Pancakes for Any Occasion

I originally came up with this idea when my girls and I were making pumpkin pancakes for Halloween. The pumpkins were a hit, but there's no reason to save this technique for October.

Try making:

• Stars for the first day of school
• Hearts for Valentine's Day
• Shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day
• Bunnies or flowers for Easter and spring
• Pumpkins, ghosts, or bats for Halloween
• Christmas trees, stockings, or snowmen for Christmas
• Numbers for a birthday breakfast
• Dinosaurs, cars, flowers, or whatever your kids happen to love

You could even let everyone choose their own shape for a special weekend breakfast.

If you're making these to celebrate the first day of school, consider making them the night before and popping them in the toaster when you're ready to eat. Pair them with my 12 Back-to-School Tips for a Fantastic First Day. A fun breakfast and a little encouragement are a pretty great way to send kids out the door!

What You Need to Make Shaped Pancakes

You don't need pancake molds to do this. The secret is two plastic squeeze bottles with two different-size openings.

You'll need:

• Your favorite pancake batter
• 2 clean plastic squeeze bottles
• A nonstick frying pan or griddle
• A pancake spatula turner
• Cooking spray or butter, if needed for your pan
• Your favorite pancake toppings

Leave the tip of one bottle as-is. You'll use the smaller opening to draw the outline of your pancake.

For the second bottle, cut the tip shorter so that the opening is wider. This lets the batter come out faster and makes it much easier to fill in your shape.

Fill both bottles with pancake batter, and you're ready to start drawing!

How to Make Shaped Pancakes

1. Draw the outline

Heat your griddle or frying pan and use the bottle with the regular, narrow tip to draw your shape. (Don't forget to prep the pan with butter or oil if your pan is not nonstick.)

Don't worry about making it perfect! In fact, slightly wobbly stars, hearts, dinosaurs, and flowers are part of the fun. You should have seen my first pumpkin-shaped pancakes. They were pretty ugly, but the kids loved them anyway.

Simple shapes are definitely easiest when you're first getting started. Once you get the hang of controlling the bottle, you can get more adventurous.

2. Fill in the shape

Switch to the bottle with the shortened, wider tip and fill the inside of your outline with batter.

Because you outlined first, the outer edges will already have started cooking by the time you fill in the center. That gives the finished pancake a slightly darker outline and helps the shape stand out. It's best to work quickly.

If you don't want the darker outline, work on one pancake at a time and fill the shape immediately after drawing it.

3. Flip and finish cooking

Once bubbles begin to form and the first side is ready, carefully flip the pancake and cook the other side until golden brown.

And that's it!

Tips for Better Pancake Shapes

Start simple. Hearts, stars, flowers, letters, and basic animals are easier than complicated designs.

Don't make the batter too thick. It needs to flow easily through the squeeze bottles. If your batter is especially thick, you may need to thin it slightly.

Keep the heat under control. Shaped pancakes take a little longer to draw than regular round pancakes, so you don't want the pan so hot that the first part burns before you've finished the rest.

Give yourself some room. Larger, simple shapes are generally easier to draw and flip than tiny detailed ones.

Expect them to look homemade. That's the point! You're drawing with pancake batter, not cutting cookies with a cookie cutter. A slightly crooked dinosaur has a lot more personality anyway.

Don't make the whole batch into shapes unless you have a lot of time on your hands! I usually make a few special-shaped pancakes and then cook the rest of the batter as regular circles.

Let the Kids Decorate

This is where the kids can really get involved.

Set out mini chocolate chips, berries, sliced bananas, whipped cream, powdered sugar, sprinkles, or whatever else you have on hand and let them turn their pancakes into little works of art.

Blueberries make great eyes. Strawberry slices can become mouths, spots, or decorations. Chocolate chips can turn a plain pancake into just about any character your kids can dream up.

A Quick Safety Note

Be careful about letting young kids squeeze the batter onto the pan themselves.

Even if the pan's handle isn't hot, heat rising from the cooking surface can burn little hands. Kids may be able to help with the first batch while the pan is still warming up, but once everything gets hot, I recommend letting an adult handle the cooking.

The kids can take over when it's time to decorate!

Make the First Day of School Extra Fun

Shaped pancakes are one of those little things that can make an ordinary morning feel special, which makes them especially fun for the first day of school.

Make stars, the first letter of each child's name, their new grade number, or even a school bus if you're feeling ambitious.

And since that first day can come with plenty of butterflies, breakfast is also a great time to talk about what the day might be like. If your kids are nervous about meeting new classmates, check out my tips for helping kids make friends at school and my Back-to-School Friendship Game.

Then tuck one of my back-to-school lunch box jokes into their lunch and send them off with a smile.

Shaped Pancake Ideas for Holidays

Once you've tried this technique, you'll start seeing pancake possibilities everywhere.

For Halloween, bring back the pumpkins that inspired this whole idea. For Valentine's Day, fill the griddle with hearts. Try shamrocks in March, flowers in spring, stars for the Fourth of July, and trees or snowmen at Christmas.

You can use the same technique with your favorite pancake recipe, so there's no need to learn a new recipe every time the calendar changes.

And you definitely don't have to wait for a holiday. Dinosaurs on a random Tuesday are perfectly acceptable!

A Little Breakfast Magic

I love ideas like this because they're simple. You don't need to buy another specialty kitchen gadget that will end up buried in a drawer. Two inexpensive squeeze bottles can turn your regular pancake batter into something your kids will remember.

The pancakes won't all turn out perfectly, and that's okay. Half the fun is seeing what happens when you flip them over!

So grab some pancake batter, pick a shape, and start drawing. Breakfast just got a lot more fun.