Pancakes on busy school mornings aren't usually happening in my house. This freezer trick may have just changed that.
I love pancakes. I also love the idea of being the sort of mother who glides into the kitchen each morning with perfectly coiffed hair, a warm smile and a full breakfast spread waiting for her children. There would be fresh orange juice. Perhaps a little pitcher of warm maple syrup. Nobody would be looking for a missing shoe while I yelled that we needed to leave six minutes ago. But I’ve had children for more than a decade now, and at some point, you have to accept the mother you actually are.
On weekday mornings, getting everyone dressed, fed and out the door on time is an accomplishment enough. Weekends aren’t much better for my pancake prospects: My Danish husband usually makes aebleskivers, the spherical little pancakes his family grew up eating. I’m hardly going to complain about this arrangement. They’re delicious.
This means that I almost never make a hearty stack of pancakes, even though I love them. So when I came across a trick that promised to turn a batch of pancake batter into pancakes I could make straight from the freezer, of course I was going to try. The original idea pitches the concept as a clever way to save leftover pancake batter, but I was much more interested in its make-ahead potential. Could I freeze an entire batch of batter and pull out exactly as much as I needed on a busy school morning? If it worked, pancakes might finally stand a chance around here.
What is the frozen pancake batter hack?
Instead of cooking all your pancake batter at once, pour the extra batter into an ice cube tray and freeze it. Once the batter is frozen solid, you can pop the cubes out and store them in a freezer bag for future breakfasts.
When you do want pancakes, there’s no thawing or mixing involved. The frozen batter goes directly onto a hot griddle, where it’s supposed to melt, spread and cook into a regular pancake. A bag of frozen batter cubes could make a hot pancake nearly as convenient as popping frozen waffles in the toaster—and considerably more appealing.
Does the frozen pancake batter hack work?
I decided to test the hack with Taste of Home’s pancake recipe. I mixed the batter, then portioned it into a silicone ice cube tray and popped it in the freezer overnight.
Putting frozen cubes of pancake batter onto a hot griddle felt strange. I was skeptical mostly because I couldn’t see how the outside of the pancake wouldn’t burn while the frozen, domed center was still trying to thaw. I lowered the heat accordingly and found that 325°F was the sweet spot on my griddle.
The cubes took considerably longer to cook than fresh pancake batter, but they slowly began to melt and spread. Eventually, I was left with little pancakes surrounding an icy hump of batter in the center. At this point, patience would probably have been useful. Instead, worried about burning the bottoms and tired of waiting, I flipped them.
The still-melting batter did spill out around the edges a bit, but flipping sped things up considerably. It also meant my pancakes weren’t exactly round, though I thought the irregular shapes gave them a particular charm. They were also tiny—even smaller than silver-dollar pancakes—which I found adorable.
How do they taste?
Most importantly, these make-ahead pancakes were delicious. The outsides cooked up crisp and golden, while the centers were warm, fluffy and much airier than I expected from batter that had spent the night in the freezer. If you’d handed me one without explaining, I’d never have guessed it had started the morning as an ice cube.
From a strictly time-saving perspective, I’m not convinced the hack gets breakfast on the table any faster. The frozen pancakes spend longer on the griddle than fresh batter would, although making batter properly—and giving it time to rest—adds time of its own.
But convenience isn’t always about shaving minutes off the clock. On a busy school morning, I can absolutely see the appeal of pulling a few batter cubes from the freezer and leaving them on the griddle while everyone brushes their teeth and hunts for homework. I may never become the mother with the little pitcher of warm maple syrup, but pancakes before school does seem more plausible.
If you try this hack, let us know how it goes in the comments below!
