Intro to Easy
One of my favorite things to do is spend quality one on one time with our kiddos. Sometimes the kiddos need a break from each other and its really good for mama to spend some one on one time with them. My favorite thing to do with them is to cook or bake. Sure we do tend to make messes and have to wash a lot of dishes afterward but its quality time with my children and memories are being made in the kitchen.
Most of my kitchen memories as a child were with my dad or my grandma. My mom wasn’t that much of a cook growing up, she worked a lot and my Dad was always home (retired and had a bad back from a work injury). So most of my cooking and baking skills were taught mostly to me by my stay at home dad. So when I get the opportunity to cook with my kiddos, I take every chance I get, because those cooking in the kitchen with dad and grandma memories are my favorite. And I hope my children will have some of those great memories too.
The other morning when we got up for the day Ellie and I attempted to make Toy Story shaped pumpkin spice pancakes using these molds from Pampered chef. We had this Pumpkin Spice quick bread mix (Krusteaz) that on the back of the box had a recipe for Pumpkin Spice Pancakes. So we figured why not. Let’s try it. Looks easy enough and we will be creative and use our molds and make Toy Story pumpkin spice pancakes. It’ll be great!! So easy! And they’ll be so cute and it’ll be kid-friendly! Right? Nope, we were wrong on everything but it is kid-friendly. It was still easy enough that the 4 your old could help.
The Mishap
Turns out the pumpkin spice quick bread mix isn’t that great for pancake molds or even making pancakes. We kept burning them and the consistency of the batter was more cake-like than pancake batter. I am pretty good at making pancakes, so for the batter to not turn out correctly was really odd to me. and as for burning them, well the first pancake always gets burned that’s a given. but instead of wasting the batter, (we don’t do that here.) We decided to bake little cakes using our brownie pan. ( I love this pan. It’s my favorite thing ever!) And let me tell you, that was a brilliant, easy, and innovative move because the pancake cakes turned out amazing.
The Recipe
Here’s the recipe for our Pumpkin Spice Pancake Cakes.
Equipment
- Pampered Chef Brownie Pan
- Whisk
- Mixing bowl
- Measuring cup
- Measuring Spoons
Ingredients
- 1 Pouch Krusteaz Pumpkin Spice Quick Bread Mix
- 1½ cup Milk
- 1 Egg
- 1 Tbsp All-Purpose Flour
- 1/4 cup powdered sugar (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Whisk together the full pouch quick bread mix, milk, egg, and flour. Batter will be slightly lumpy. (dont over mix.) Let batter stand for 2 mins.
- Pour batter into the squares of the brownie pan.
- Bake for 20 – 25 mins.
- Let cool for 2 mins.
- Pop the mini cakes out of brownie pan.
- Sprinkle some powered sugar on top of the mini pancake cakes.
Summery
The little pancake cakes turned out to be so delicious! Ellie ate like 3 of them all by herself. ( She was a hungry toddler!) Not to mention we had a few family members and friends over for dinner that night and had the little cakes set out with some pumpkin cookies and they legit were gone within minutes. Everyone loved them.
It’s a little crazy to me how sometimes a recipe turns out wonky but then you can easily turn it around and make it into something else. I love it when that happens and I get to talk about our “happy little cooking mistake”. However, there are some times where the mistake you try to fix ends up turning into an epic fail. It happens. We’ve all been there.
So have you ever had a cooking mistake that turned into something even better? Or did you have a cooking mistake that turned into an epic fail? Share with us in the comments below.