Cake Batter Pancakes

I had the morning off of work, so I decided to make something from scratch rather than the grab and go breakfast I usually have in the morning.  This recipe was pinned onto the Recipes Jenn Should Try board by Kelsey G.  I also pinned it awhile back, but from a different source; turns out the recipes are exactly the same! They both actually got it from How Sweet It Is. 

The ingredients the recipe calls for:


1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
 2/3 cup yellow cake mix (I used funfetti cake mix)
1 tablespoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-2 cups milk (varies depending on cake mix) (I used 1 cup)
assorted sprinkles

I read the comments on the blogs, and people have said that they used other types of cake mix and got good results.  I used funfetti cake mix since I didn't have any yellow cake mix on-hand and had opened a box of funfetti for the cake batter cookies I recently made. (Btw, the difference between white and yellow cake is that yellow cake calls for whole eggs and white cake calls for just the egg whites; the flavors are the same). 

The directions:

Combine flour, cake mix, baking powder, sugar and salt in a bowl and mix. Add 1 cup of milk, egg and vanilla extract and stir until smooth.  You want the batter to look like regular pancake batter; not too thin, not too thick. This will vary greatly on the brand of cake mix you use. Start with 1 cup of milk and add more if needed.

Mine looked good after just one cup of milk:

Preheat a skillet on medium heat (I use an electric grilled and turn it to 275 degrees). Fold desired amount of sprinkles into batter. Pour batter in 1/4 cup measurements onto skillet and let cook until bubbles form on top, about 2-3 minutes. Flip and cook for 1 minute more.

To be completely honest, I'm too lazy to actually measure out the amount of batter per pancake.  I just estimated 1/4 cup of batter each time, and I did pretty well.  I got about 11 pancakes (10 big ones and 2 half-sized ones for my dogs-they LOVE pancakes)
  
Serve with vanilla glaze.

 And for the glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tablespoon milk (I used a tablespoon plus a teaspoon)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used a full teaspoon)
assorted sprinkles

Mix milk, extract and powdered sugar until glaze forms. You may need to add a little more sugar or water/milk to reach desired consistency. Mix into glaze and drizzle on pancakes. Top with extra sprinkles.

And the verdict?  Looks better than it tastes.  The pancakes were okay.  I didn't think that they tasted that much like cake batter; they tasted like normal pancakes, just a little sweeter.  I'm guessing that's because it needs more cake mix and less flour.  The cake batter cookies were half cake mix, half flour and tasted like cake, whereas these were 2/3 cup cake mix, 1 1/2 cup flour and pretty much tasted like regular pancakes.  

I didn't like the glaze because it just tasted like powdered sugar.  I added more vanilla extract to give it a more vanilla-y taste and it didn't make that much of a difference.  I think a cheese cream glaze would have been better, or even just adding some butter flavoring to it so it would be more frosting like.  Even a fruit-flavored syrup would have been better than this glaze.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed with this recipe.   I really was hoping they would be as good as the cake batter cookies, but in the end I was bummed out.  I tried so hard to like it and although the pancakes weren't bad, they were also not worth the effort of making them this way.  It would probably be better to make normal pancakes and add sprinkles (and maybe some vanilla extract and sugar) to the batter.  I did not like the glaze at all and wouldn't make it again.

Bottom Line: NOT WORTH IT!