What's for Dinner? Pancakes Pals

It is Saturday morning and I am sitting on the couch drinking coffee, watching the news, flipping through a cookbook when Heidi stumbles out from her bedroom.

"What are you doing?" She asks.

"Well, I really want to start updating my blog regularly again so we should start cooking new things and taking pictures again." I replied.

Too that she jumps up and sprints to the bookshelf in her playroom returning just as quickly with her cookbook and asks if she can help. We spend the next ten minutes flipping through this kid friendly cookbook when she exclaims she is STARVING and that I need to make her pancakes RIGHT NOW.

I deserve this. This is exactly how I treated my dad when I was Heidi's age. Stumble out of my room demanding food RIGHT NOW. My dad still will say "feed me, I'm hungry!" any time I start to have a blood sugar meltdown in his presence.

By this time I was on my third cup of coffee and feeling pretty pulled together so I said, "It's your cookbook, why don't you make me some pancakes. I will help you but you will do most of the work."

She was all over that and strapped on her super cute apron we picked up at the State Fair last year.

We used the recipe out of her book. I was worried they wouldn't be very good but they turned out fine. And I realized that I have never posted my pancake recipe here so I will have to do that in the near future.

Here is what you will need, but totally feel free to use your favorite box mix or recipe.
2 cups all purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
a dash of salt
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 3/4 cups milk
2 eggs

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the oil, eggs, and milk and stir until most of the lumps are gone.

Just call her Heidi Childs! I had her measure out all the ingredients and put them in the bowl. The only thing she had trouble with was the flour so I poured more than she would need my small batter bowl and showed her how to level the measuring cup out with the handle of her wooden spoon. I also had her crack her eggs in a small bowl, not over the batter, to prevent shells in our pancakes. She did a great job!

Next pour the batter on to your hot griddle or a preheated pan. Make a medium size pancake for the head and two smaller ones for the ears.

Heidi poured the one on the left and mine is the one on the left.

Cook until the edges are brown and the batter bubbles. The very carefully slide the spatula around all edges to make sure it is completely lose from the pan. Flip in one quick motion to keep it from folding up on it's self.

Cook the other side until it's golden brown.

The cookbook suggested to use blueberries for the eyes but we did not have any on hand so we improvised and used M&M's. The M&M's were kind of fun because when we took them off to eat the pancakes they had stained the eyes and nose on the face.

Heidi sliced strawberries for the mouths.

How fun is that?!  I think the top two are Heidi's and the bottom two are mine. Then I made regular pancakes with the rest of the batter. We ended up with four Pals and five regular pancakes.

She had so much fun making these pancakes. It was her first time taking the lead and having me be her sous chef. When her auntie came to pick her up a bit later she was so excited to tell her all about the pancake pals.

She wanted to name them but I told her I didn't think I could eat them if they had names.  But this one looks like a Bob to me. I guess I can name him now, since I already ate him...

In the end, the pancake pals were pretty good. I do like my recipe better but this was Heidi's meal and she was pleased. I hope this is the beginning of her joining me in the kitchen and a chef and not just a helper. It was a lot of fun.