The Art of Making Pancakes: A student comically explains why making pancakes is an art form.

First things first: the batter. I suppose you could technically make your own, but that honestly sounds exhausting. Why would you put any more effort into this than you have to; we are making cooked batter discs here, not ornate French cuisine. Just pull out the eternal box of Bisquick every house seems to have and you’ll be good. There are probably directions on the box: ignore them. Only the weak use directions. Don’t be that guy that pulls out measuring cups to make freaking pancakes. Just pour an arbitrary amount of milk or water and an arbitrary amount of powder into a bowl until it seems about right. More powder means thicker batter, and thicker batter means thicker pancakes. 

Now comes the best part: cooking the dang things. You could use a regular circular pan, but the best method is to use a square or tabletop rectangular griddle; you can make more pancakes more efficiently on squared cooking surfaces. After buttering the surface, pour circles of batter onto the pan, and let gravity do the spreading. If you try to manually add batter and micro-manage the circles, the browning will come out weird and uneven. As you decide which size of pancakes will be best, remember that the smaller the pancakes, the more you can fit, but the larger the pancakes, the more accomplished you’ll feel when you flip them. Speaking of flipping, the number one thing you need is confidence. Pans can smell your fear and will laugh at any feeble, petty attempts to flip carefully (This is especially true if you’re trying to do the cool air-flip thing, which should only be attempted for singular, large pancakes). Once you learn to slide and flip your spatula with confidence, the number of times you flip a pancake onto its neighbor or clip the edge of the pan will decrease dramatically. Flip the pancakes when bubbles are nearly popping on the surface. The first batch will be weirdly pale and unevenly cooked. Fear not; such is every first batch of pancakes. Save these for yourself to eat after you’ve served batch after batch of beautifully browned pancakes to happy customers; this will remind you that even you, a great pancake master, are not above mistakes. The first batch’s mediocrity was not in vain, however, since now the fat in the pan is evenly distributed and ready to brown the next generation. 

Now is the time to separate the amateurs from the less-skilled amateurs! Get creative, make fun shapes. Remember, confidence! You are the best in the world at making pancakes, and don’t let naysayers or any evidence to the contrary convince you otherwise. If people eat your pancakes and say, “rest the batter to make them less tough” or “Zack please we’ve had nothing but pancakes to eat for three days”, pray for their ungrateful hearts and tell them to wake up earlier next time if they really want to try their hand as the next great pancake maker.