Birthday Cake Pancakes (Funfetti Pancakes)

Funfetti pancakes or birthday cake pancakes are light, fluffy, and loaded with sprinkles. It’s great for birthday celebrations or any celebrations.  Instead of baking cakes, you can surprise kids with these birthday pancakes loaded with sprinkles!

Jump to:

• Why you’ll love Funfetti pancakes
• Ingredients
• How to make birthday cake pancakes
• Best tips
• Variations
• Common questions
• Related breakfast recipes
• 📋Birthday Cake Pancakes (Funfetti Pancakes)

Why you’ll love Funfetti pancakes

1. Don’t want to bake a cake for your kid’s birthday or other special celebration? Make Funfetti pancakes instead. It’s as delicious and colorful as a birthday cake would be.
2. It’s super easy to make using box pancake mix and yellow cake mix. But nothing should stop you from making your own pancake cake mix and yellow cake mix.
3. Upgrade your pancake cake mix with colorful sprinkles, frosting, and whipped cream.
4. Pancakes with SPRINKLES! Sprinkles make everything better. Your little one and child-at-heart in the family would love it.
5. The goodness of cake and pancake together in one dish! Now that’s hard to resist!
6. These pancakes turn out to be so soft and extra fluffy, as pancake ingredients are mixed with cake mix.
7. This recipe is versatile. You can choose your favorite cake mix and alter the toppings as per preference.
8. Fit for all celebrations! These pancakes are sure to bring a smile to everyone’s face making your day extra special.
9. No better way to start any special day than with these colorful, birthday cake pancakes. Colorful breakfast treat in the morning!
10. Great to go ahead and freeze it. Any time you are in the mood to celebrate, simply pull it out of freeze, reheat, and enjoy!

Ingredients

Here’s what you’ll need –

• Pancake mix
• Yellow cake mix
• Plain flour
• Sprinkles colored jimmies
• Vegetable oil
• Milk
• Vanilla extract
• Eggs

Vanilla Glaze –

• Powdered sugar
• Vanilla extract
• Whipping cream

For Topping –

• Whipping cream or cool whip
• Sprinkles

All the ingredient’s exact measurements are mentioned in the recipe card below.

If you do not want to use box mixes you can make your own pancake mix and cake mix.

Pancake mix – choose a good brand for best results. I recommend Krusteaz or Hungry Jack.

Yellow cake mix – Pillsbury cake mix is best. Again you can choose to make your homemade version of yellow cake mix.

Use equal portions of pancake mix and yellow cake mix.

Sprinkles: use good quality sprinkles so the colors of the sprinkles don’t run into the batter. Add a tablespoon of flour to the sprinkles before adding it to the pancake batter. Add sprinkles only in the end just when you are ready to make pancakes.

Use about 3 to 4 tablespoons of confetti sprinkles for every 1 cup of pancake and 1 cup of cake mix.

For topping:

Whipped Cream

Vanilla Glaze – made by mixing powdered sugar, vanilla, and water or milk.

More Sprinkles.

How to make birthday cake pancakes

This Funfetti cake pancake batter is super easy to make and comes together really fast. This recipe uses box mixes – both pancake box mixes and yellow cake mixes. You can make your own homemade pancake and cake mix and use that instead of box mix as well.

1. Add 1 tablespoon of plain flour to sprinkles. Mix and set aside until use.
2. To make pancake batter – In a medium bowl mix dry ingredients pancake mix, yellow cake mix, and set aside.
3. In another bowl whisk together wet ingredients – 2 eggs, milk, vegetable oil, vanilla extract.
4. Whisk well.
5. Add the dry mix to the bowl of wet mix. Don’t overmix.
6. It’s okay if the batter has small lumps. They will disappear once you cook them.
7. Cook pancakes – When you are ready to make pancakes, add sprinkles to the batter and stir very gently making sure you don’t over-mix.
8. On a hot griddle ladle out ¼ cup of pancake batter. If you have a large griddle pour two or three pancakes on the griddle.  Cook on medium-low flame.
9. Once birthday cake pancakes/funfetti pancakes begin to bubble it’s time to flip. Carefully flip the pancakes and cook on the other side on medium flame.
10. Remove from griddle and serve immediately with vanilla glaze and whipped cream.

These are great to make ahead and freeze.  Wrap individual pancakes in cling film, place them in zip-lock bags or air-tight containers, and freeze them.              

When you don’t have time to cook up a batch on busy mornings, simply remove it from the freezer, reheat, and serve.

For vanilla glaze –

Whisk together powdered sugar, vanilla, and heavy whipping cream. It should be of pouring consistency. If the glaze is too thick, add more cream.

Whipping cream –

Whisk chilled heavy whipping cream using a hand beater until stiff peaks are formed. Transfer to piping bags fitted with a star nozzle.

Serve Funfetti pancakes with vanilla glaze, whipped cream on top, and sprinkles.

Best tips

1. For fluffy pancakes, do not over-mix the batter. Pancake batter can have a few lumps and they will disappear when cooked.
2. Rest the pancake batter before cooking for a few minutes. Resting will help make soft pancakes. Note – do not add jimmies or sprinkles at this point. Add it after resting time when ready to cook.
3. Overmixing will take away the beautiful soft texture of pancakes. Nobody wants tough/hard pancakes. Once flour comes together with wet ingredients, STOP MIXING, even if you see lumps.
4. Use a heavy pan like a cast iron griddle to cook pancakes, so birthday cake pancakes won’t stick.
5. The griddle should be hot enough before you start cooking. Preheat the griddle when the pancake batter is resting. If the griddle is too hot, pancakes will burn from the outside, undercooked inside. If the griddle it not hot enough, pancakes will take longer to cook and will turn hard.
6. Grease the pan with a little cooking oil or butter, to help release the pancakes easily. Remember pancakes will absorb the oil or butter, use little.
7. Use good-quality sprinkles so the colors don’t run into the batter. Another great tip is to fold sprinkles with a little flour first before mixing them into the batter.
8. Once you fold in sprinkles into the batter, cook pancakes immediately.
9. It’s important to know when you should flip pancakes. Once the edges start to cook and you see a couple of bubbles at the center, carefully flip. It takes less time to cook the top side than the bottom side.
10. Flip once.
11. Do NOT press down the pancakes. You want them to be soft and fluffy!
12. To make homemade pancake mix – for 1 cup all-purpose flour add 2 teaspoon baking powder, ¼ teaspoon baking soda, ¼ teaspoon salt.

Variations

Yellow cake mix can be switched with any type of cake mix like chocolate cake mix, red velvet cake mix, or lemon flavored cake mix.

Depending on the type and theme of the celebration use different types of sprinkles –

• For Christmas celebrations use red, white and green jimmies.
• Use pink or red sprinkles for Valentine’s Day celebrations.
• For the 4th of July celebrations use red, blue and white jimmies.
• Orange or black sprinkles for Halloween.

Common questions