Now, I must preface this post by making a confession. Even though I created a blog called Art of The Date where Drew and I are trying to have more creative and artsy dates, I am not actually artistic. So, I apologize in advance for the atrocities labeled art that you are about to see. Ok, now that I got that out of the way, lets get into it!
The inspiration for this date came from a YouTube video where YouTuber Rosanna Pansino and her boyfriend had a pancake art competition, emoji edition. Don't they look like they're having so much fun?! I thought that was such a cute idea, and would make for a perfect date night activity! I took the competition aspect out of it, and instead came up with four categories: team logo, animated character, emoji, and animal. That way we could both be making a similar piece at the same time, but personalized to what we like. Usually I do a bunch of research and Pinterest digging before the date, but I thought this was as simple as it gets. What did I need to look into? Ah, so sweet and innocent.
SUPPLIES:
- pancake mix (and any other required ingredients such as water, milk, eggs, etc.)
- food dye
- plastic squeeze bottles
- skillet
- whisk
- bowls (one for each color you plan on using)
SETUP:
The first step is to make the pancake batter following the directions for whichever mix you choose to use. We went with good ol' Aunt Jemima which just needs water. So far, so good. Then, you separate the batter into however many bowls you need. We were going to make four colors, so we needed four extra bowls. We wanted red, blue, black, and yellow and then we decided to use regular pancake batter for white. I know what you're thinking...but doesn't pancake batter get nice and golden brown when you cook it? Well, it had been a long week, so I'm going to blame it on that. And on Rosanna Pansino for not divulging her secrets to getting perfectly colored, non-golden brown emoji pancakes.
Next, it's time to add the food dye. I put some blue food dye in one of the bowls and it turned blue. So far, so good! I tried to get a darker blue, but adding more dye didn't help. So, light blue it was! Then I added red dye in a bowl and it turned pink. So, we dumped most of the bottle in and it was a darker pink. Then we spent some time looking up color combos and tried adding some yellow and blue to make it darker and hopefully more red. It didn't. OK, pink it was! Now for black. Thinking back to our elementary days, we know if you add a bunch of colors together they can turn black. So, we added all the food dye together, and got poop brown. OK, poop brown it was! The yellow worked perfectly, and was definitely the closest to the color we wanted. I bought Simple Truth natural food coloring, so that could be why the colors weren't quite as vibrant as I was hoping. I would try gel food coloring for this next time, I think it would work better. I also think mixing in colored frosting would work well and make for great tasting pancakes!
MAIN EVENT:
First up was the team logo category. I went with the best team in the National League, the Braves. Drew went with his alma mater, the ASU Sun Devils. I had the brilliant idea of using sheet pans and having both the front and back burners on in order to have a larger surface to work with. Genius, right?! However, we have cheap sheet pans that aren't perfectly flat, which means the pancakes didn't cook evenly. So, some parts started to burn while other parts were taking foreverrr to cook. This lead to the beautiful pancake art you see here. Though they didn't turn out perfect, we did learn some valuable lessons for the next round. We switched out the sheet pan for a nice, flat skillet, popped open a bottle of wine (what's date night without some wine?!), and began again!
The second category was animated characters. I'll give you a minute to look at the pictures and try to guess our characters....go ahead, take your time... OK, give up? Mine is obviously everyone's favorite dragon, Mushu from Mulan. Drew's was Princess Mononoke from a Japanese anime movie. And here we learned our 3,424th lesson of the day. It's helpful to completely cover the back of the pancake in one color, especially when your design is more intricate like Drew's mask, in order to help everything stay together. Then, when you flip it over, the design will be on the front side and in tact. You also want to make sure the heat is kept on low so it solidifies the pancake without browning it, if color is what you're going for. You can also do pancake art with plain batter. You put the outline down first, and it will brown darker than the filling which still creates an image (see example below). So far, Drew's art has been slightly better (OK, fine, way better!) but I've had better luck with the flip. It's all in the wrist, babe... ;P
Originally, I had planned on keeping the pancakes warm in the oven and then sitting down and eating them all at once, but Drew wasn't having that. Which I was fine with, because it ended up taking a lot longer than I expected. The pancakes didn't look very pretty, but they sure tasted good! We were starting to get a bit sugared out at this point, but luckily we had some sausage patties just begging to be a part of the fun. We may or may not have eaten all 8 sausage patties, I can't recall... Then, we were ready to continue! The next category was emojis. Again, Drew's artwork far surpassed my chinless heart-eyes emoji, but the flip still had it in for him. This one mostly stayed together though, so we celebrated the small victory with more wine!
Finally, it was time for the last category; animals. Could we make a fourth quarter come back for the win?! I played it safe and decided to go for a butterfly. Drew's philosophy was go big or go home, so he chose to make a portrait of his dog Mojo, the most adorable Boston Terrier ever. And the verdict?
Drew absolutely killed it! Flip and all! Please, please ignore the butterfly. I already warned you that I have no actual artistic talent! Though there were definitely some challenges, and not everything turned out like we wanted, it was still a great time. The quality time with each other is what mattered most. Plus, we got to eat our work, so it was a win-win! Also, this gives me an excuse to share some ridiculously cute pictures of Mojo for comparison sake. Enjoy!
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