Turn Ice Cream Into Pancakes With Just 2 Ingredients

Craving a delicious breakfast this week but don't have time to visit either IHOP or Denny's for pancakes? Make them at home, then. Thanks to a fun and easy food hack circulating on social media, you can easily make homemade pancakes with just two ingredients, both of which may already be in your pantry: ice cream and self-rising flour. You'll get a pancake batter that will cook into fluffy, delicious flapjacks — just like any other pancake batter would. 

How does this work, you ask? Well, ice cream is typically made with ingredients you'd also find in pancake batter, such as eggs, milk, and sugar. When ice cream melts, it's essentially like mixing those ingredients together. Mix in self-rising flour, which already contains a leavening agent such as baking powder, and you've got yourself the perfect pancake batter. The best part? These two-ingredient pancakes are soft, fluffy, and delicious — and no one has to know your secret unless you share it. 

But what if you only have all-purpose flour or cake flour at home? Can this hack still work? Well, yes, but your pancakes may come out a bit flatter without the leavening agent in self-rising flour. In this case, I'd recommend adding a ½ teaspoon of baking powder to your batter. 

Ready to make these two-ingredient pancakes at home? Start by choosing your ice cream flavor. You can always go with vanilla ice cream, but I personally got a little adventurous and used durian ice cream. As a bestselling author of three cookbooks, my recipes just can't be basic. I melted about 2 heaping cups of the ice cream in the microwave before mixing in about 1 cup of self-rising flour. Then, I cooked the pancakes as I normally would. The results? The pancakes were not bad! The dish gets more points because it was so effortless to make. I am definitely adding this easy pancake recipe to my repertoire. 

Next time, I might try melting chocolate ice cream and mixing it with self-rising flour before folding in chocolate chips to make double-chocolate pancakes. Or, imagine melting matcha ice cream to make easy matcha pancakes. The possibilities are really endless, so pancake and ice cream lovers can rejoice. 

Finally, you can also go ham with your toppings. I topped my durian ice cream pancakes with a mountain of whipped cream and almond slices. While some find the flavors or smell of durian to be polarizing, my pancakes were divine.