TikTok food trends come, and TikTok food trends will probably go. It will be a while before we discover whether dalgona coffee, 5-ingredient chocolate chip cookies and carrot bacon have any staying power at all. But here’s hoping pancake cereal never leaves us.

After watching about a gazillion TikTok videos in which people made adorable little pancakes and devoured them hungrily out of a bowl – always with syrup, often with milk, occasionally with a photogenic pat of butter or a sprinkling of fresh fruit – I decided to try to make the viral food myself. And you know what? It was pretty darn good!

Here’s what I learned:

Any Pancake Batter Will Work

You could probably make this with just about any pancake recipe. Some people on TikTok have even used store-bought mixes, but seriously, how hard is it to make your own batter? I used this Food Network Kitchen pancakes recipe. Some TikTokers have dressed up their cereal pancakes with sprinkles, with festive results, but I think anything bigger than that (blueberries, chocolate chips) would probably gum up the works.

You Don’t Need a Squeeze Bottle

You seriously don’t need anything special to make pancake cereal. I used a flat, round nonstick pan and a gallon-size resealable plastic bag, into which I poured the pancake batter and then snipped just the teensiest bit off of one of the bottom corners, to let the batter escape. (I also tried a piping syringe I found in the back of my pantry, but it produced essentially the same results. A squeeze bottle probably would have been ideal for creating perfect little pancakes, but I didn’t have one.)

A Little Practice Never Hurts

It was not super easy, at first, to control the drips so they would make tiny, dime-size circles, but I got the hang of it. (Try practicing a bit on a plate before setting batter to a hot pan or skillet for best results.) Eventually, though, I decided random little shapes and squiggles were more fun and made those instead. I cooked the teensy pancakes ’til they were golden brown on one side and then did my best to flip them over, but they kind of clumped together. It really didn’t matter, in the end; they still ended up cooked through, with a speed that is perfect for the impatient (like me).

Milk, Syrup – or Both?

After admiring how adorable the pancake cereal looked, I tried it with syrup. The bits were delicious, although, if I were being picky, I might note that the syrup kind of overwhelmed the teeny pancakes (the greater surface area maybe changed the usual pancake-syrup ratio) and ended up pooling at the bottom of my bowl. For the next batch, I went with both milk and syrup, and that was also tasty. You’ve got to eat it fast, though, or the little pancakes get soggy. But really, hungrily gobbling the pancake cereal down was hardly a hardship.

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