ACTIVITY: Candlemas Pancake Candles

We've talked about Candlemas, and how - as Christ was presented - he was recognized as the light of the world. 

There are so many fun ways to celebrate this as a family! One of the first ways to celebrate is with pancakes. Yep, pancakes. Having breakfast for dinner is cause for celebration alone, and you can celebrate Candlemas with your family over a dinner of candle shaped pancakes. Here's how:

WHAT YOU NEED:
 ~ four bowls
 ~ four condiment bottles (or plastic ziploc baggies)
 ~ food coloring
 ~ pancake mix (and any ingredients needed to make mix)
 ~ flat pan or skillet


1. First, prepare a batter of pancake mix. You can use your favorite mix, but I've found that buttermilk mix works best. We prefer to eat with whole grain mix, and this completely works...you'll just see (in the photos below) how it tends to brown a bit more than a buttermilk base would. 

2. Once prepared, divide the mix into four bowls. Three of the bowls should TOTAL about half the mix, and the other half should be in the fourth bowl. Into three smaller bowls, add food coloring to make one bowl orange, one yellow, and one blue (or a favorite color). Keep the larger bowl "plain" Mwhite pancake mix. See photo above. 

3. Turn your stove on and begin heating the skillet. While it heats, pour the four colored pancake mixes into four different condiment bottles. If you don't have condiment bottles (I got mine at Wal~Mart for less than a dollar each), you can put it into a plastic zip-loc baggie and snip the corner. 

4. Once your skillet is nice and hot - and treated with Pam or butter - turn it off. Quickly, but gently, make a basic candle outline in white with a flame outline in orange. See Figure A above.

5. Then, fill in the flame with the yellow batter and draw a design into the stem of the candle with the blue batter. Be creative! You can draw whatever you want. In the example above, I made one candle with the Alpha and Omega and the second with a simple cross. See Figure B above. 

6. Turn your skillet back on. Take the white batter and fill in the candle, pouring directly over the blue writing. See Figure C above. 

7. Let the pancakes *just* start to bubble/firm, and flip over. The "good" side of the pancake is the side that was down, so you want to flip them as soon as they're firm enough to preserve the color. As mentioned, I used a whole wheat mix which tends to brown a bit more than the buttermilk, so the color wasn't as preserved in the photo. See Figure D above, as well as the photo of the birthday candles below. 

6. Serve your candle pancakes with some favorite breakfast sides and share the story of Candlemas with the family! 


PS = a tip. Practice makes perfect, and by the end of breakfast/dinner, I had perfected the candles as shown below. It also happened to be a friend's birthday, so I made "35" year old candles...you'll see the coloring is much better as, after making so many candle pancakes, I had the flip timing down pat. Good luck!!!