How to Plan a Pancake Party

Pancakes are probably one of the few foods that almost everybody likes. It’s comfort food at its best and one that’s eaten all times of the day. A Pancake Party would be great as a morning party for kids or a Sunday supper party for adults.

Instructions

How to Plan a Pancake Party

1. Make and send invitations: Color copy a picture of a pancake from the front of a box of pancake mix. Write all the information about date, time, location, and how to RSVP right onto the pancake. Fold into envelopes and mail.

2. Prepare this icebreaker: As guests arrive, hand them a sheet of paper and a pencil and ask them to make as many words from the word “pancake” as possible. Whoever comes up with the most gets to make the first pancake. (Note: There are at least 17: pa, pan, pane, pack, pace, pea, peak, pen, can, cake, cane, cap, nap, nape, neck, ace, ape)

3. Gather together all the “equipment” you’ll need: Borrow electric skillets and griddles so you have enough to make lots of pancakes at one time. (Also borrow some ordinary small skillets for the pancake races) You’ll also need pancake turners. Set out plates, napkins, forks and knives.

4. Buy all the ingredients for the pancakes: boxes of pancake mix, milk, eggs, and oil—as well as the “extras,” including chopped pecans or walnuts, chocolate chips, bananas, blueberries, bacon, sausage, and anything else you think guests would like to add to their batter. For “toppings,” of course you’ll need syrup, but you might also like strawberries or other fruit. Juice, milk and/or coffee are probably your best choices for beverages.

5. Make and freeze some pancakes for the pancake races.

6. Relate this legend to your guests: In the town of Olney, England in 1445, a woman who was making pancakes heard the church bell and realized she was late for church. She absentmindedly picked up the pan and ran all the way to church with it. That started the tradition of pancake races. (You might also tell them that Liberal, Kansas—a town that was said to be as flat as a pancake—now holds its own pancake race in competition with Olney each year.

7. Hold your own pancake relays: Using the small skillets and the pancakes you made ahead, organize relays with rules like” the pancake had to be flipped twice during the course of the run.”