Pancake Day is just around the corner, and if you're wondering if you can skip the flipping and leave the hard work to your air fryer this year, I've mixed up a batch to see if you can cook pancakes in an air fryer with any degree of success.
As woman&home's head of shopping, I've reviewed the best air fryers on the market meaning there's very little I don't know about air fryers, and I'm happy to admit it led me to be more than a little skeptical as to whether pancakes is one of the many things you can cook in the air fryer.
Although there is limited guidance online on cooking pancakes in an air fryer, my social media feed has been full of home chefs breaking with tradition to make easy, splash-free stacks of American-style fluffy pancakes all in one go. Sorry crêpe-lovers, the best non-stick frying pans are still your best bet.
But, the proof is in the pudding, so I broke out my Ninja air fryer and whipped up a simple pancake recipe to give air fryer pancakes a try in our test kitchen ahead of Shrove Tuesday. As a result, I've discovered the best methods to try...
Here's how to make pancakes in an air fryer
The best way to make pancakes in an air fryer is to make a thick batter with plenty of raising agents and pour a small amount onto a sheet of baking paper, although a better upgrade may be some air fryer liners. I prepped a number of these, roughly the same size as my air fryer basket, so it made it easy to layer my pancakes on top of each other.
Once you've poured the batter for your first pancake, you top this with another sheet of baking paper and then spoon a little more mixture so it's sitting on top of your first pancake. I repeated this five times before putting the drawer into my air fryer, pre-heating to its maximum temperature of 205°C, for ten minutes.
The first thing I noticed was that the top pancake cooked very quickly, but it took a lot longer for the lower layers to catch up. I was a little worried that the middle layers would take so long to cook that the top pancake was burnt by the time they were done. Because of this, I made the executive decision to flip the stack so they had a better chance of cooking evenly. After all, the pancake flip is all part of the fun.
After my ten minutes was up, I let the stack cool down a little before peeling apart the layers of baking paper. The finished result was far from appealing, but to be honest, I was expecting worse.
Looks aside, how was the taste? Well, surprisingly, they tasted almost exactly like a regular pancake. Perhaps a little more rubbery, on account of the longer cooking time, but they were nice and fluffy in the middle, and if covered with some berries and syrup I'd happily have eaten the whole plate.
In contrast to the pancake recipes I'd seen online, I had a feeling that the trick to getting a more aesthetically pleasing air fryer pancake was to cook them one at a time.
Taking my remaining batter, I took out the removable insert from my air fryer basket and poured some batter directly onto the non-stick surface. Although it was a more high-maintenance method, this is the one I'd recommend for a more authentic stack of pancakes.
Once the first pancake was finished (after 3 minutes or so) I was able to cook two or three at a time, flipping mid-way through and stacking them up as I went. In essence, I used the bottom of my air fryer basket as a frying pan. Consider a silicone spatula one of the best air fryer accessories worth buying for pancake day.
So, can you cook pancakes in an air fryer? The answer is yes. But the real question is, should you cook pancakes in an air fryer, to that I'd say not if you can help it. Because like many of the things you should not cook in an air fryer, such as toasting bread in an air fryer, it's a lot of effort and the results are not worth the extra work.
The clue's in the name, pancakes are easier and quicker when cooked in a pan. However, if you're stuck without an oven or one of the best induction hobs this Pancake Day, learn from my mistake and cook your pancakes in your air fryer one at a time. It's a bit more fiddly, but a lot tastier.
