A long time ago (last weekend) in a galaxy far, far away (Sacramento, CA) – Deede and Josh gave Dan some Star Wars™ – Heroes & Villains pancake molds for Kwanzaa. (don’t ask).
Yoda, Darth Vader and a stormtrooper. Williams-Sonoma sells them. We decided that we would give them a try this morning. I did not happen to have buttermilk on hand (shocking, I know) – so we cheated and used Bisquick instead of the recipe on the back of the pancake molds. I did add a little vanilla extract, but that was the only substitution from the classic Bisquick recipe on the box.
Dan wanted to eat breakfast in this century, so the Bisquick definitely helped speed the process along.
I mixed the ingredients and then read the instructions on the pancake mold box.
Easy to use: place on a preheated griddle and pour in your batter; once the first side has set, remove the molds and flip the pancakes.
I’m going to have to disagree with the “Easy” part – Pain in the ass would have been a better description. To be fair, it did get much easier with the second and third batches.
I coated my molds with cooking spray before setting them on the griddle to heat up. I set my griddle at 350 degrees.
I ended up cutting the tip of a squeeze bottle I already had (to make it larger) to help with the “ease” of getting the batter into the molds. Williams-Sonoma also sells a Pancake Pen that probably does a better job at delivering batter. Mixing the batter into the bottle is key and the the Williams-Sonoma one has instructions to do that. My batter transfer was a mess. I had pancake mix dripping down my arm, on the counter and one lower kitchen cabinet… again, don’t ask.
The instructions said to use 1/3 cup batter on each pancake – it seemed like a lot, but I did it anyway.
By the time I finished placing the batter into the Darth Vader mold, the stormtrooper started to bubble. I took the mold off and apparently someone had thrown acid on my stormtrooper because his face looked like a big blob.
In the meantime, Yoda lost an ear…
I decided to get more serious… less batter, more patience. Do or do not… there is no try.
I loaded up Darth Vader with less batter and waited… and waited…
Much better! I gave it some more time before flipping.
Victory – all holes were intact. 😉
It felt kind of weird to spread butter and pour hot syrup onto my new little buddies – but eating them didn’t seem to be a problem. They were light and fluffy.
I would suggest trying these out prior to planning a “birthday pancake breakfast” for a room full of screaming kids. The pressure was pretty intense with just the two of us – Ha!
For sure a fun way to start off a Sunday. Thank you Josh and Deede. We also updated the blog to WordPress 3.0.4 and I updated to a newer version of my theme. Exciting stuff! No really, it is.
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GAH! Creepy-delicious!
I love it!!!! I laughed all the way through that post!!!! You are so funny!
Happy New Year!
Awesome! Glad you got it figured out. They look great. For the future if you ever need buttermilk, all you need to do is stir together 1 c. of milk with 5 teaspoons of white vinegar of lemon juice. Then just wait 10-15 mins and you are good to go. 🙂
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Thanks Deede. I did look up subs on the iPad and saw those two listed. I was out of lemons and I didn’t have the vinegar either, but they are both on my shopping list now. 🙂
Do I even need to tell you how much John wants those molds? Very cool indeed. And for buttermilk, you can buy dry buttermilk in the baking aisle. It keeps for a good 6 months in the fridge. You just add the powder with the dry ingredients and the water with the wet. Works perfect every time!
You made me laugh through the whole post…. love you 🙂
The boys would love these molds….
Did you give Higgy the broken yoda ear? LOL
Boy did that make me laugh…………what a way to start the day…….I can just picture you two…………certainly a far cry from my old dollar pancakes I used to make you………now the green ones for St. Pats and the red ones for Valentines………that was my best shot at being creative……….
Proud of you honey…………….Mommers
Two things:
1.) The last picture is my favorite. There is something about the syrup all over Yoda’s little face.
2.) You are a goddess. I would have found a way to make these deformed even WITH the molds!