Saturday’s are often post sleepover mornings (or more accurately stay awake all night playing video games, guitar hero, and magic mornings). Serving pancakes to groggy teenage boys has become somewhat of a tradition.

The funny thing is that although I enjoy cooking, I have stayed away from the land of pancakes until this past year.  For some reason the thought of trying to make fluffy, perfectly browned pancakes intimidates me.

This weekend I made not one batch, but two. One was edible the other was not. 

I’m famous for substituting ingredients and ‘eyeballing’ measurements when I cook.  Apparently that doesn’t work so well when it comes to making pancakes.  I didn’t have quite enough Aunt Jemima pancake mix for an entire batch and I had an unopened box of Bisquick.  I scanned the directions for both mixes; each called for eggs, milk, and oil so it seemed logical to me that I could top off the Aunt Jemima with a bit of Bisquick.

At first the batter was too runny and the pancake batter oozed all over the griddle and instantly turned black. Being the wise woman I am, I added more mix. Turns out that was the wrong thing to do; the batter was so thick it barely made it from the ice cream scoop to the Teflon, by the time the pancakes were done on the inside they were burned to a crisp on the outside.

Epic fail, lesson learned.