Halloween Pancakes!

Halloween is JUST TOO CLOSE. Since it falls on a Thursday, I can’t shake the feeling that everything will putter out like the last season of Heroes. For all intents, Halloween is this weekend, and that is JUST TOO CLOSE.

So I’m sort of just grabbing at everything now, determined to do as much Halloweening as humanly possible. I’ll pass something seasonal in a store and think, “FUCK, THAT’LL BE OLD HAT IN FOUR DAYS!” If luck is on my side, the thought will remain in my head and never escape my lips. Holy shit, I’d have to run out of Target fast if I said that out loud.

I’m absolutely drowning in stuff I want to cover before Halloween. It’s paralyzing. With so few days left, there’s no way to get to it all. Which things do I pick? Are the Dollar Tree bats more interesting than my Stretch Screamers Frankenstein doll, mint in sealed box? I don’t know! All I can do is panic!

And THEN, just last night, I found something ELSE! Luckily, this something else was too obviously awesome to bench with the other “potentials.” No, this was something that required a SPEED TRIBUTE.

I’m talking about pancakes!

Hungry Jack’s Easy Pack Halloween Funfetti pancakes!

I was floored. I’m still floored. I don’t know if they’re new-for-2013, but I’m pretty sure that they’ve never been released in such small, adorable packages.

(I should’ve thrown a quarter into the photo, so you’d have some sense of scale and wouldn’t need to guess at how small and adorable they are. Ah well. There’s always next year.)

See, this is what I’ve been talking about all along. Halloween isn’t just about the surface bullshit. It’s a chance to do so many things you wouldn’t otherwise do. The last time I made pancakes was so long ago that I can’t even definitively state that I’ve ever made pancakes. I had no reason to suspect that I’d be making pancakes anytime soon, or EVER, really.

And yet, here I am. I stand (sit) before (away from) you as someone who MADE PANCAKES TODAY. No, it wasn’t a life-changing experience. No, I didn’t wear my glee like an Axis Chemicals Joker smile. But it did make me happy, and it did mark 10/21 in a way that no date anywhere near it could be marked.

That’s what Halloween is really about. A collection of tiny events made super special by their gross tonnage in a limited time. At no other time of year will I make so much over so little, so many times in a row.

The pancake mix is great. It’s the easy kind. I can’t remember what traditional pancakes call for, but here, you’re only mixing the floury fairy dust with water. That’s it. Cup of water in a bowl, dump the junk in, and you’re DONE.

Well, you’re done with the prep part, at least. Then you gotta cook ‘em.

I’m not good at making pancakes. I have trouble with any recipe that involves flipping food in a pan. Pancakes, omelets, you name it. I guess it’s because of my notoriously terrible aim. Telling me to “toss the keys” is like telling me that you never, ever want to see your keys again.

I’m just a bad pancake flipper, basically. When I get old enough, I’ll start blaming it on arthritis.

Accurately predicting trouble, I greased that pan with everything we had. Olive oil, cooking spray, butter… I used everything except Hungry Jack’s suggested Crisco. Because who the hell has Crisco? The only time I remember seeing anyone use Crisco was when Roseanne had to dislodge DJ’s head from a drawer. Even then, it happened offscreen and probably wasn’t Crisco.

Surprisingly, my pancakes didn’t come out too bad. Some were burnt, but they were easy to hide under the ones that weren’t.

Notice the little speckles? Those are candy bits. That’s what makes them Halloweeny!

You don’t really taste the candy, but it does tint parts of the pancakes in gloriously spooky orange and black colors.

The package claims that there’s enough mix for twelve pancakes, but I have to question that. I think I got six from mine, and they were pretty tiny. If I wanted a dozen, they’d be the size of drink coasters, but not like drink coasters for cans or glasses. I mean drink coasters for really skinny bottles.

Hindsight being what it is, I will spend the next week wishing I’d come up with a better unit of comparable measurement. I’d feel worse about my clunky writing if I didn’t like the word “clunky” so much. A stone’s throw from chocolate bars and Pee-wee’s big happy robot.

I recommend Hungry Jack’s Halloween Funfetti pancakes. They’re an affordable way to make fifteen minutes semi-interesting.