Hello, everyone! I don’t know about your family, but the Hobbs Crew loves our pancakes! We can eat them for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It really doesn’t matter to us!

How to Do a Pancake Bar

• Make a list of supplies
• Shop for the supplies
• Prepare your toppings for serving
• Mix pancake batter
• Prepare and heat your griddle
• Cook the pancakes
• Top them with your choice of toppings
• Eat and enjoy!

Before we talk any more about those yummy pancakes, let me take a moment to introduce myself to you. My name is Kaycee Hobbs and we have a large family. We have seven beautiful children who love to eat! Three of those seven are growing boys who have a hallow stomach and so I am always searching for creative and economical ways to keep them full.

Now, let’s get to talking about how to put together a pancake bar that will feed the entire family.

Make a list of supplies

The very first thing we did was make a list of the supplies we needed. I do a menu plan every week so I can make one trip to the store and not have to keep running back out. Our supply list looked like this:

The beauty of this idea is that you can add whatever you would like to the mix. In fact, I say the more her merrier!

Shop for the supplies

Once I have made my list, I placed my order with Walmart pick up. If you haven’t tried Walmart’s curbside pickup, you need too! This minor change in the way I shop has saved me so much time and money.

All you must do is download their Walmart app, create an account using an email address, and start searching for the items you would like to purchase. Once you have found the item, add the quantity that you would like to your virtual shopping cart.

Once you have selected all your items, you need to select a day and time you would like to pick up your order. Then enter your payment information and check out. It will save the payment information until next time too.

On the day you are scheduled to pick up your order, you will need to “check-in” on your app to let them know you are on your way. Now just to let you know, this will track your location so they can see when you arrive and bring out your grocery order to you.

Prepare your toppings for serving

The first thing that I do on the day that I plan to serve the pancake bar is to prepare my toppings. I place each topping in its own serving dish. Now by dish, I mean paper plates or a paper food tray.

These are our favorite to use because they hold quite a bit and we can just throw them away when we are done.

Let’s chat about the toppings for a little bit. As I said above, you can choose whatever you like. Our kiddos love fruit and so I always plan to have several options in that category.

This time we have three choices of chips: chocolate, peanut butter, and butterscotch. I have to say, who knew butterscotch chips on a pancake could taste so good! It was the first time I had tried this, and it was amazing!

We like to heat our maple syrup on the stovetop before we serve it. It works so well and heats the pancake though so it’s nice and warm right before you eat it. We have a syrup carafe, that we bought at a thrift store, which can be heated on the stovetop.

Mix pancake batter

While Rick was working on the griddle, our eleven-year-old daughter, Bella, began mixing the pancake batter. I am going to be really honest with you here and say I got the boxed pancake mix where all you have to do is add water.

You will need the following items for this part:

• Spatula
• Large Mixing Bowl
• Pancake Mix
• Water

Yes, we have a homemade recipe we use but since we were learning something new, I was going for easy! Bella measured out the amount she needed to make twenty-four pancakes and added it to the bowl. She added the amount of water the instructions told her too and began to mix it with a spatula.

The trick to making pancake batter is making sure it has enough water because you don’t want your batter to be too thick. I think the pancakes tend to be on the dry side if you do that. However, if you have it too thin it will run everywhere and become a giant mess.

This is what I tell Bella, follow the directions on the package. If it seems too thick add a little bit of water and stir. You can repeat this until it is the right consistency. You can always do a small test pancake if you need too.

Just remember, you can always add more water, but you can’t pull it back out.

Prepare and heat your griddle

One of the things that inspired this pancake bar was our new toy. We are now the proud owners of the Camp Chef PRO90X Outdoor Stove. We also purchased the 16 X 24 Fry Griddle as an accessory so we could make things like pancakes with ease for our large family.

We talk about why we chose this model, in this post. Check it out and watch our unboxing video.

4 Reasons Why We Chose Camp Chef Over Blackstone

Since this was our first cook on our new outdoor griddle, I have to say we were a little nervous. I guess maybe that’s why we offered so many toppings? Just in case the pancakes were burnt, the children could attempt to mask the taste with all these wonderful extras. Ha! Just kidding! Maybe a little!

Rick started the griddle on the Camp Chef PRO90X Stove and once it was warmed up, he put the oil on it. He didn’t want it to be too hot because the pancakes would burn on the outside and not cook all the way on the inside.

Cook the pancakes

Rick added vegetable oil to the griddle while it was heating up. He used a squeeze bottle to dispense the oil and spread it around with a spatula. He scooped up the pancake batter in a one-cup measuring cup and poured it onto the hot griddle. He was able to get twelve medium-sized pancakes on the griddle at one time!

Let’s take a brief moment here to explain why I am so excited about this… Cooking pancakes for a large family means we have to commit to the process for up to at least two hours and we have to eat in shifts. It is impossible to sit down as a family to eat pancakes because you can only cook two or three pancakes at a time.

So, my quest in this whole experiment was to answer this question: Could we cook enough pancakes that we could sit down and eat the meal as a family? Let’s find out!

The first batch of pancakes got toasty pretty fast so Rick had to turn the heat down so they wouldn’t burn. The most challenging part of this griddle is learning to work how hot it should get. It tends to run really hot, so things cook quickly or burn quickly. He quickly adjusted the heat to a lower temperature and the pancakes began to brown beautifully!

Top them with your choice of toppings

Once he had cooked all the pancakes the fun part began! All the toppings! We buttered our pancakes and added the toppings we wanted.

It was cute to watch the kiddos… Some of them added everything while others were strategic about what they did. My favorite was butter, peanut butter, butterscotch chips with a dash of warm maple syrup. It tasted absolutely marvelous!

Eat and enjoy!

Eating as a family and enjoying our mini event that we created was a lot of fun! I love planning these types of occasions because it creates some excitement for our children. And what did it cost me? A box of pancake mix and some toppings!

Let your children be a part of the planning too! Even the littlest member of the family can contribute a topping idea. This lets them be a part of it all!

We have made things even easier for you!

Download this free Pancake Bar Planner to help you get started!

Sign up for our newsletter below and it will unlock the PDF for you to download directly from our website. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at thehobbscrew@gmail.com. Thanks for reading! Go make some memories!