Pancake day is often a much-loved day for kids and adults alike, a time where everyone can indulge in tasty treats for breakfast or dinner. If you’re wanting your kids to eat a little bit healthier this Shrove Tuesday, we’ve got a few ideas that will get your little ones excited. If you want to know how to make pancakes from scratch, check out our How to Make Perfect Pancakes article.
Whether you’re making your pancakes or have store-bought ones, you can cut them into various shapes to make the base of your cute animals. To do this, you can use cookie cutters or a knife; just make sure an adult does this. Once you’ve got the pancake shapes, you can cut the fruit to make the animals' faces. Here are a few quick step-by-step guides for different animals.
Lion: to make a lion, you need one large circle and one smaller circle piece of pancake, some sliced strawberries, two blueberries, and raisins. Start by putting the smaller circle on top of the larger one toward the bottom, then add strawberries around the outside to look like the mane, the two blueberries for the eyes, a small piece of strawberry for the nose and use the raisins to make the smiling mouth.
Bear: for this, you’ll need two tiny pieces of pancake for the ears, one large circle for the face, a piece of banana, raisins and two blueberries. Simply place the two small pieces of pancake above the large portion, place the banana in the centre, use the raisins to make a detailed nose, and then use the blueberries as eyes.
Butterfly: you just use the fruit to create adorable designs for the butterfly. You can use blueberries to make the body, then either banana or strawberry slices to make the wings and place the raisins at the top to make the antennas. To make them stand out even more, why not use strawberries and bananas to make the wings?
There are various fun shapes you can make to get your kids excited about fruits; you can get cookie cutters in flamingo, pineapple, and star shapes to make this task easier. Here’s a few ideas:
Hearts: you can use a cookie cutter to make your pancakes into cute heart shapes, or cut them out yourself with a knife, and then surround them with a strawberries, blueberries and bananas. To make them even more special , you can cut the strawberries into hearts by carving out the stem and then cutting a small ‘V’ the top.
Smiley Faces: These are the easiest to make and are therefore ideal for younger children. You can use whatever fruits you like to make an array of cute faces. We recommend using blueberries or strawberries for eyes, raisins for a mouth and you can use a small piece of strawberry if your youngsters want to make a cheeky stuck-out tongue smiley.
Get your kids involved: once you’ve safely cut up the fruits and pancake shapes, allow them to make these fun designs themselves to get them involved in the preparation and encourage them to eat all the tasty fruits.
We hope you and your family love making these exciting snacks this Pancake Day. If you need to stock up on kitchen essentials beforehand, browse our extensive Baking collection.
