Freezer-Friendly Alphabet Pancakes

This conversation was sponsored by Glad® Food Protection. All opinions are my own. Be sure to check out Glad’s Wrap Outside the Lines  promotion for a chance to win a trip for two to Las Vegas, NV (I met my husband in Las Vegas!). #SAVEITSUNDAY #FoodFairyTale

Have you seen all the viral pancake videos going around lately? The ones where some pancake magician whips up a work of art with nothing but some pancake batter and a skillet? Yeah. Me, too. And I thought to myself, “If that guy can make Yoda I can totally make some silver dollar-sized pancakes with a letter in the middle of each one for the kids. TOTALLY easy.”

Ha.

Hahahahahahahahahaha.

This will not be a blog post about silver dollar-sized ABC pancakes.

But with a little :::COUGH COUGH a lot::: help from Charles, we did make the kids some fantastic ABC pancakes in the name of National Pancake Week (which starts February 24th, holla!).

The best part is that pancakes are freezer-friendly! So all the time and effort we put into these won’t go to waste…the kids will literally be eating their ABC’s for quite some time. And now that I’ve had some practice (we did the alphabet twice and added some hearts for good measure…and that doesn’t count all the practice pancakes I messed up in the beginning), I’ve got some tips for making these pancakes and also for freezing them. 

Tips for making Alphabet Pancakes:

• I used a squeeze bottle (like the kind you put ketchup or mustard in) to hold the batter. There are fancier devices available, but if you’re not too much of a perfectionist, this will work fine.
• Once you’ve mixed your batter, let it sit for a few minutes before filling up the dispenser. This will make the batter a little less runny, and easier to work with.
• Work fast. The quicker you write, the better your letters will be,
• I did block letters and filled in the inside for most of the letters, but for some I just wrote the letter in a single stroke and then thickened it.
• I had better luck using cooking spray than when we tried to use butter to grease the pan. The butter bubbled up and made it hard to write straight lines.

I knew that if I made the entire alphabet out of pancakes (twice), I’d want to freeze them so we could eat them for the next few weeks.  Truth: we eat a lot of frozen pancakes, and they’re not usually homemade (“not usually” = “never”). So before I froze them, I looked up how to freeze pancakes to make sure I didn’t mess this up!

Here’s how to freeze pancakes:

• Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper
• Place pancakes on parchment paper and stick in the freezer until frozen
• Place frozen pancakes in your storage container

In a perfect world, you’d line the parchment paper with pancakes and not stack them like this. But I had *so* many…and only so much room in my freezer…that I just kind of dumped them all on there. This worked fine, although I did have to unstick a few before putting them in the Glad FreezerWare.

Once they’re frozen, you can put them in your freezer container. I love, love, LOVE the Glad FreezerWare. It’s just so easy! The large containers hold up to 8 cups or 64 ounces (or in my case, about 50 pancakes with room for more).  BPA-free, they are freezer-safe, microwave-safe, and dishwasher-safe. Interlocking lids help seal in freshness and prevent leaks. 

{Side note: I have one Glad FreezerWare container that I am using to collect cut veggies that are on the brink of going bad…instead of throwing them away, I cut them up and toss them in the FreezerWare to be used for soup!}

It doesn’t need to be National Pancake Week to eat lots of pancakes. And if you’re making a batch, it doesn’t take that much more time or effort to make some extras to freeze for later! And trust me…they don’t need to look fancy for your kids to love them. Because as I learned the hard way, ain’t nobody got time for that.

If you’re looking for food storage tips, be sure to check out the Glad Protection Pointers to learn how to properly store your food. They have tips and ideas for storing more than 100 different foods – definitely worth  taking a peek!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Glad Food Protection. The opinions and text are all mine.