Pancake Face

So when I was young, my grandmother used to bribe me to go to church with her. ‘Come on, ammoninni, [pronounced ‘ah-MO-ni-ni’ and possibly spelled ‘amuninni’ it means ‘Let’s go’ in the Sicilian dialect of Italian, but we always thought it was ‘Hurry up’. It got said A-LOT] it’s Sunday, lets go to church and I’ll take you to IHOP afterward for breakfast, you can get anyyyyything you want.’ and off we would go.

I remember sitting there for the hour or so and wondering what on earth required this much stand-up, sit-down, kneel, stand-up, and on and on, activity, and why people couldn’t just be nice to each other on their own instead of taking up part of the weekend to listen to some guy in a robe chant occasionally, and turn his trip to the supermarket into a ‘lesson’.

I still feel pretty much the same way. My ‘church’ these days is yoga [humm, lots of stand-up, squat-down, balance-on-one-foot, with occasional chanting … but no robes at least, we’re in Australia not on an ashram after all … what was my point …?] which, while keeping me quite a bit calmer than church, also has the added benefit of giving me great shoulders and abs.

Recap – Sicilian, church, yoga, abs – got it?

But after church we would go to The House of Pancakes that is International, as promised, and every time I would order the same thing.  A ‘Funny Face’ pancake. If you have never seen it, this creation is a ridiculous thing to feed anyone, especially a child – a big plate sized chocolate chip pancake, with whipped cream eyes, nose and smile, and maraschino cherry eyeballs, sprinkled with more chocolate chips and dusted with powdered sugar. Mom must have loved that one. Don’t think I could manage more than a few bites now, but boy I loved it back then.  I remember asking once [or every time maybe] if we could just got to IHOP and skip the church part since the pancake was the nicest bit, not surprisingly Ro said no, oh well.

So I was craving my own funny face pancake the other day … and what did I come up with?  A Whole Wheat Brown Sugar Pancake with blueberries, yogurt eyes, nose and smile, and raspberry eyeballs, sprinkled with more blueberries.

Happiness on a plate. I didn’t even have to go to church to earn it, I may have gone to yoga …

~~~

Ingredients

1 batch of Whole Wheat Brown Sugar Pancake batter
1/4 cup blueberries
1/2 cup thick yogurt
4 raspberries

Full Method in under 100 words

Make pancake batter. Heat a large non-stick skillet or electric hot plate on medium, and spray well with oil.

Pour on 1 cup of batter, sprinkle over some blueberries. Once bubbles form over the surface and underside is browned, flip very carefully with 2 spatulas [I used a large flat pizza pan, yes, seriously]. Repeat with other 1 cup of batter. [Make mini 50-cent piece pancakes with any left-over].

Decorate with yogurt, extra blueberries and raspberries. Giggle like a little kid while eating.

Makes 2 big ol’ plate sized faces.

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