Ready for a psychedelic breakfast?
With the whole all-marble-everything trend, I thought to myself one day “Why not marbled pancakes? And heck! Why not make them rainbow marbled pancakes!?” I bring you probably the only way I will ever eat pancakes from now on. Seriously, they’re a TON of fun to make and are just so darn pretty!
Full disclosure: before commencing the project, I hopped onto pinterest to see if it had been done. My reaction: “What!? No one else has had this idea before! I AM A FLIPPIN’ GENIUS!!!!” Then last night I decided to check google, which I really should have done in the first place. Turns out I’m no genius cause it was done here 3 years ago! Oops. Mad props to you original pancake marbleizer! You got on the marbling train before it left the station girl.
So as you may imagine, these guys take a WICKED amount of food colouring. So for any of you concerned about the crap they put in food colouring to get those unnaturally vivid colours, maybe this isn’t the pancake for you. Everyone else? Eat ’em up!
I imagine you could totally do this with natural dyes like blueberry or beet juice, but it might effect the flavour and/or texture. If you try it, let me know cause I want to make these lots but don’t want to ingest a bunch of food dye either. Now let’s get to the recipe and how-to! (I like to use exclamation marks a lot. Can you tell?)
- 3 cups + 2 tablespoons cake flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 3 tablespoons baking powder
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 2 cups milk or buttermilk
- 2 large eggs
- 3 teaspoons vanilla
- 4 tablespoons melted butter
- Liquid food colouring
- Your choice of toppings (butter, maple syrup, sprinkles, whip cream, lucky charms)
- Bamboo skewer
- Pancake dispenser (not necessary, but a total game changer)
- In a large bowl, sift together the dry ingredients and set aside.
- In a small bowl, mix the milk, eggs, and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated.
- Gently fold in the melted butter.
- Heat oil on a skillet or pan over medium-low heat. I set min to 225. Pour your batter, making 2-3 pancakes at a time.
- Immediately place a drop of each food colouring colour onto each pancake. With a bamboo skewer, swirl the food colouring around, mixing them together and creating fun patterns and lines.
- Let the pancakes sit and flip once the batter is bubbling. Cook until golden brown.
Tips
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You can use whatever recipe you like, but keep your pancake batter thin. I add an extra 1/4-1/2 cup of milk to the recipe I work with.
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For best results, reload your pan/griddle with your cooking oil (I use coconut) with every new batch.
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Make sure to keep some white space between all the colours. As you can see, some of my pancakes are one big mass of colours. This looks fine but the marbling is most effective when against a plain background (aka the pancake batter).
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For poppier and brighter colours, use neon food colouring.
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Not a tip, more of a heads up: the marbling will only work on one side of the pancake since the other side starts cooking on the griddle immediately.
I should warn you that these are addicting to make. I estimate they’d take the average (aka sane) person about 30 minutes, however I was so methodical and having a ton of fun combining colours and making different swirls and patterns that it took me closer to one hour. No, more than an hour. I got that into it. There’s something really calming about swirling the dye around, and even though I was making breakfast, it also felt like I was creating art. I know I know that sounds totally hokey, but it was seriously a ton of fun.
I initially was going to make this a St Patrick’s post with rainbow colours and all that, but these pancakes are good any time of year. Did you think that stopped me from decorating it with lucky charms and green jello powder? Oh no. No it did not.
Though in hind sight, the green jello powder wasn’t a good idea. Lime flavouring on maple syrup doused pancakes is not a flavour combo I’d recommend. Those little lucky charm marshmallows however? Absolutely perfect.
I’m sorry for ruining pancakes for you forever now! Or maybe you’re welcome, because they really are way cooler than the plain ‘ol thing.
I’d eat these, and so would my pet unicorn. 🙂
But maybe she’d want some more candy on top 😉
My 5 year old would LOVE these! Definitely going to try this out for our weekly Sunday pancake tradition!
They’re totally fun for kids! I want to try it with natural dyes too
We tried these this morning, but I could taste the food coloring and they stained fingers and mouths big time!!!!!
Yikes that’s too bad! I didn’t find that at all. I wonder if different food colourings have stronger tastes and dye more strongly.
I was looking around forever as I couldn’t work out what term I wanted to research for rainbow pancakes that weren’t just single colours! Looking forward to try this on Tuesday
Oh good, I hope you enjoyed them!