I tried making air fryer pancakes and it was a huge fail

I feel like there are endless opportunities when it comes to using an air fryer but something I’ve not tried to do is bake in one, despite mine having its own ‘bake’ setting.

So with Pancake Day around the corner, I decided to try making pancakes in an air fryer.

Now, I have myself down as being pretty decent at cooking and baking but let me tell you, this was enough to take away my dignity and induce a huge amount of self-doubt.

@offthe_shelf HAPPY PANCAKE DAY! 🥞🤩 Check out these Air-Fryer Milkybar Pancakes 😍 #pancakeday #milkybar #airfryer #pancakes #uk #uksnacks #viral #fyp ♬ Watermelon Sugar - Harry Styles

I followed a TikTok tutorial from an account called Off The Shelf (@offthe_shelf) and used a bottle mix from Tesco.

I didn’t add in the chocolate like they did for their ‘Milkybar Air Fryer Pancakes’ and to be honest, I’m glad I didn’t waste any chocolate on the catastrophe that was my final result.

Brace yourself because these pancakes don’t resemble the sweet treat I was hoping for – here’s how it went.

The pancakes didn't cook well in the Air Fryer and the baking paper scrunched up (Image: Newsquest)

I started by making the mixture in the bottle and transferred it to a mixing bowl to mix it through properly.

I find the powder from the bottles sometimes struggles to mix with the water you put in so it needs a helping hand.

However, I added a bit too much water as I wanted to get all the clumpy powder out of the bottle. I decided to go for it and got straight into mixing. I decided to add my own flour to thicken the mixture.

The hack for air fryer pancakes involves using baking paper cut into pieces that fit in your air fryer drawer. You add a small amount of pancake mix onto a piece of the paper then add another sheet of paper on top of that and repeat the process.

@uktoday_ I tried making Air Fryer pancakes but failed miserably! Have you tried this hack? #airfryer #pancakeday #pancakes #recipesoftiktok #fail ♬ Time for Cooking - Vin Music

I think the biggest fail for me though was my baking paper not being able to withstand the heat and curling up, making any hope of the dreamy stack of pancakes well, exactly that, a dream.

This TikTok tutorial said the pancakes “only needed about three minutes” to cook but my failed attempts struggled to cook at all.

When I opened my air fryer drawer, all I saw was quite literally a hot mess with gloopy mixture stuck to baking paper and a sheer lack of fluffy delicious pancakes.

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They say ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ and this really was one of the situations where I wondered why I’d bothered to deviate from my usually successful method of making pancakes in a frying pan.

It wasn't all bad as I used the rest of the pancake mixture to make some pancakes in the frying pan (Image: Newsquest)

With the big air fryer fail knocking my confidence just slightly, I decided that instead of using the last of the mix to make a third attempt, I’d instead resort to using my trusty ‘ol frying pan and of course, it did the job.

To make things a little bit better, I topped the pancakes with chocolate sauce and mini fudge pieces.

It’s safe to say, I won’t be rushing to make pancakes in the air fryer any time soon but I’d like to re-attempt it at some point.