The Sheet Pan Pancake Hack You Need For Serving Breakfast To A Crowd

If you think about all the times you make pancakes, chances are that it's usually for more than just one person. Pancakes are a bit of a celebration breakfast, something you make when you've got the whole family under one roof, or on the last morning of a long weekend when everyone's got time to linger over breakfast. In short, pancakes bring people together. As the pancake cooker, however, pancakes are a little high maintenance. Even if you're working with a decent-sized griddle, there's still a lot of flipping going on, and it's tough to get fresh, hot cakes on everyone's plates at the same time. But there is a solution: Enter the sheet pan.

You might kick yourself when you realize how easy it is to make one big pancake in the oven with a sheet pan, especially if you've ever struggled with a pan and spatula while on breakfast-making duty. By mixing up a big batch of batter and spreading it out in a sheet pan, you can feed a crowd and have everyone's pancakes ready at the same time, plus you can accommodate multiple topping requests like bananas, blueberries, and chocolate chips all in one bake. While your jumbo pancake is doing its thing in the oven, your hands are free to take care of the rest of the pancake accompaniments such as fresh fruit, whipped cream, and warm maple syrup.

To make a sheet pan pancake, all you have to do is make a big batch of pancake mix. You can start from scratch or you can use a pre-made mix — which is nice if you're in a place where you don't have access to a pantry, like at a vacation rental. A standard home-size sheet pan (which is different from a cookie sheet, by the way, and is important to know for this task), is known as a half-sheet pan by professional chefs, and measures 18 by 13 inches. To fill your sheet pan with enough batter, you'll need to make around six to seven cups of mix, which is about 4 cups of dry mix or ingredients.

While you're mixing up your batter, preheat the oven to 400 to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the batter is ready, grease the sheet pan very well, pour everything into the pan, and spread it out. If you have requests for special flavors — like fruit, chocolate, or peanut butter — designate squares for each flavor and sprinkle or spread the ingredients on top before you put the pan in the oven.

When the big cake is ready to bake, pop it in the oven and set a timer for 15 minutes. When the top is a golden brown color and the cake feels spongy to the touch, it's ready to go. Don't let it overbake because it can get very dry in just a few extra minutes.

If you like your pancakes to have a crispy, brown top, you can take an optional extra step of brushing the baked pancake with some melted butter and flashing it under the broiler for a minute or two. If that doesn't matter to you, you can skip it and just go right to serving. Cut your giant pancake into equal-sized squares and scoop them out with a spatula — you should be able to get around 16 to 20 pancakes depending on how large you slice them, which can feed 8 to 10 people.

When you've got everything all sliced up and served on plates, your breakfast crew can finish them any way they like with all the toppings you had time to prepare since you didn't have to slave over the griddle. And while the first time you make a batch of sheet pan pancakes might seem a little unconventional — after all, traditional pancakes are round and not square — once you sit down to breakfast with everyone else instead of standing over the stove, you'll see it's worth it to have time to enjoy the morning with your friends and family. You can even use a little of that extra time to make a batch of yellow Bloody Marys for a truly unique breakfast spread that breaks all the rules in all the best ways.