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Pink Pancakes

By Jen Cincyshopper

on Jan 10, 2024

4 Comments

Pink Pancakes are just like normal pancakes but way more fun! Perfect for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, or whenever you’re craving pancakes. Even if you don’t care about the fun colors, these are some seriously tasty pancakes!

With February coming up here soon, we’re looking forward to making all sorts of Valentine’s Day recipes and pink desserts. Pink dessert recipes are a tasty and easy way to capture that Valentine’s Day feeling: for a couple of our favorites, try our Strawberry Microwave Fudge or Strawberry Cake Mix Cookies. We were looking for more fun recipes that had a nice pink hue to them and found one perfect for a special Valentine’s Day breakfast: Pink Pancakes!

This Pink Pancake Recipe, even without the food coloring, yields a nice, fluffy pancake you’ve just gotta try out. Brown it just right on the stovetop, and you’ll keep plenty of that bright pink color while still getting a sweet and tasty pancake. Once you’ve cooked all of your Pancakes up, they’ll go great with some whipped cream and berries- plus a few Valentine’s sprinkles for a little extra flair!

These Pink Pancakes turned out to be such a fun recipe that’s great for all sorts of occasions. Like we said, they’d be great as Valentines Pancakes, but they’d work on Mother’s Day too or served up as Pink Barbie Pancakes for the Barbie fans in your life! Wherever you serve these up, this is certain to be a tasty pancake recipe you’re going to enjoy.

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Why you’ll love this fun Pink Pancake recipe

• These light and colorful Pancakes turned out great for us. They’ve got the perfect little touch of sweetness and a great fluffy texture to them. If you just want a good pancake recipe, these are still worth checking out!
• Our Pink Pancake Recipe is great for all sorts of occasions. These pancakes are great for Valentines Pancakes, Mothers Day Pancakes, or even Barbie Pancakes!
• Want any other colored pancake? It’s as simple as swapping in a different food coloring! Make up some Blue Pancakes, Purple Pancakes, or Rainbow Pancakes once you’ve enjoyed some pink ones.

Pink Pancake Ingredients

The best part about pancake recipes like our Pink Pancakes is that they’re usually pretty simple and use a lot of staple ingredients. We’ll be prepping our wet and dry ingredients separately so, for dry ingredients, this is what you’ll need:

• Flour – All-purpose flour should be fine here.
• Sugar – Go with granulated white sugar.
• Baking Powder – This is the main reason we don’t have to add eggs to our recipe. Thanks to the baking powder, our pancakes will rise perfectly fine!
• Salt

For our wet ingredients, you’ll need the following:

• Milk – We used whole milk for this pancake recipe.
• Vegetable Oil
• Pink Food Coloring – There’s a lot of different food coloring brands out there you can pick from and a lot of different types of food coloring. We ended up using the “Rose” color. Feel free to mess around with whatever food coloring you have on hand- this is just what worked for us.

See recipe card for quantities.

How to make Pink Pancakes

If you’ve ever made pancakes before, this should all seem very familiar. To make these Pink Valentine Pancakes yourself, here’s all you need to do:

• First, we’ll get our dry ingredients prepped. Add flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt to a large mixing bowl. Briefly stir to combine.

• With the dry ingredients dealt with, we can start adding the wet ingredients. Add milk, vegetable oil, and a few drops of pink food coloring.

• Now we can stir to combine our ingredients into a Pink Pancake Batter. Try to mix your batter well enough to knock out any lumps of dry ingredients but avoid overmixing if you can!

• Now we can get to making pancakes! Warm up a pan over medium heat on the stovetop and add some oil or butter if you’re not using a non-stick pan. Use about 1/3 cup of batter per pancake and cook 1-2 minutes on each side. Serve topped with whipped cream, fresh fruit, maple syrup, sprinkles or any of your favorite toppings!

Substitutions

Even though our recipe for Pink Pancakes uses plenty of fridge and pantry staples, we can understand if you’re out of some of these ingredients. Here’s a few you can substitute in if needed:

• Milk – If you don’t have any whole milk on hand, you could use all other types of milk instead. 2% milk, skim milk, fat-free milk, or all the different kinds of non-dairy milks and nut milks should all work here. Don’t use buttermilk though- it doesn’t work with our baking powder and can actually make our pancakes less fluffy!
• Vegetable Oil – Really, any sort of neutral cooking oil should work here. Stuff like canola oil or grapeseed oil are going to be your next best bets. If you don’t mind the added flavors, you could also melt down some butter or coconut oil and let it cool before using it instead!
• Baking Powder – If you’re insistent on using eggs in pancakes instead of baking powder, then you’ll have to shift a few ingredients around. To compensate for the extra liquid, you’ll also have to reduce the amounts of milk and vegetable oil for each egg you add in. Understand that using eggs instead of baking powder is also going to affect the color of your Pink Pancakes.

Variations

Since these Pink Pancakes are pretty easy to make, there’s plenty of room to mess around and experiment! Here’s a few ideas if you want to try shaking things up a little next time:

• Pink Waffles – Of course, since this is pretty much a Pink Pancake Mix recipe, you could just as easily use it to make waffles instead! If you’re using pancake mix for waffles, you might want to add an extra little touch of oil but you should be good to go after that.
• Other Colored Pancakes – Since the main coloring ingredient here is our food coloring, we can easily sub it out for all sorts of different colors. By just grabbing a different gel food coloring, you can make purple pancakes, a blue pancake, or even try your hand at making some rainbow pancakes. Just know that single color pancakes are going to be much easier to make than any multicolored ones.
• Pink Beet Pancakes – Another way people add the naturally pink color to pancakes is by adding some beets into the mix. You could pull this off by adding some beetroot powder to the batter or by adding some whole cooked beets into the recipe. Your best bet with this method is blending the beet with some milk- of course, if you don’t like the taste of beets, you’ll want to skip out on these ones.

Storage / Freezing

Storage: When it’s time to deal with the leftovers, you’ll want to keep your pancakes in the fridge. Let cool to room temperature before transferring to an airtight container. Keep your Pink Pancakes in the fridge for 2-3 days.

Freezing: If you’re interested in more long-term storage, you can try keeping your Pink Pancakes frozen. First, “flash-freeze” your pancakes separately on a baking sheet so that they don’t stick together after freezing. Transfer to an airtight container or freezer bag and keep for up to 3 months- try to enjoy within 1-2 months for best taste and texture.

Best Sides to Serve with Pink Pancakes

Looking for sides to serve with these pancakes? Try these:

• Homemade Breakfast Sausage
• Air Fryer Bacon
• Strawberry Topping

Other Breakfast Recipes to try

Here are some more of our favorite breakfast recipes to try:

5 from 5 votes

Pink Pancakes

By: Jen CIncyshopper

Pink Pancakes are just like normal pancakes but way more fun! Perfect for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, or whenever you’re craving pancakes. Even if you don’t care about the fun colors, these are some seriously tasty pancakes!

Prep: 5 minutes mins

Cook: 22 minutes mins

Servings: 10 pancakes

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Ingredients 

1x2x3x

• ▢ 1 3/4 cup Flour
• ▢ 3 tbsp Sugar
• ▢ 1 1/2 tbsp Baking Powder
• ▢ 1/2 tsp Salt
• ▢ 1 1/2 cup Milk
• ▢ 2 tbsp Vegetable Oil
• ▢ 2-3 drops Pink Food Coloring

Instructions 

• Stir together all of the dry ingredients.
• Add all of the wet ingredients, including the food coloring and stir until well combined. If there are lumps, be sure to get as many of those out by whisking the batter.
• Turn the stove on medium heat and let the pan heat up, add a little bit of oil or butter if not using a non-stick pan.
• Then pour ⅓ cup of the batter to your pan.
• Once the batter starts to bubble, about 1-2 minutes, flip it to the other side and allow to finish cooking, about 1 to 2 more minutes or until there’s no raw batter and it has risen slightly.
• Repeat steps 4 and 5 until there is no more batter, then serve and top with berries and whipped cream, or your favorite toppings, to enjoy!

Notes

Experiment slowly with the food coloring or gel. Add one drop at a time. If you end up adding too much color you will have red pancakes.

Flip the pink pancakes when bubbles begin to appear. Be careful to not over brown them.

Nutrition

Calories: 116kcal, Carbohydrates: 22g, Protein: 3g, Fat: 1g, Saturated Fat: 1g, Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.1g, Monounsaturated Fat: 0.3g, Cholesterol: 4mg, Sodium: 321mg, Potassium: 79mg, Fiber: 1g, Sugar: 5g, Vitamin A: 59IU, Calcium: 154mg, Iron: 1mg

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