Vintage Recipe Roulette: C3PO Pancakes from the Star Wars Cookbook
SHUT DOWN ALL THE GARBAGE MASHERS ON THE DETENTION LEVEL
This week, in honor of the most important world holiday in the history of time, we’re making pancakes. Specifically, the C3PO pancakes from the 1998 edition of the Star Wars Cookbook.
If you’re thinking, “Wait a minute…1998 isn’t vintage!”, then I’m sorry friend, but you should really think about responding to one of those mailers from the AARP. Some of the discounts are pretty sweet. While “antique” means more than 100 years ago, vintage, alas, means 20-99, and 1998 was waaaaaay more than 20 years ago. Plus, Star Wars itself (and thus C3PO) is nearing 50 years old. It’s officially in old movie territory, even though it’s still making a few modern waves.
That old movie is still my absolute fave. I remember seeing the crawl move up the screen for the first time, and I was such a shortstack at the time that my dad whispered it to me there in the darkness of the Park Plaza Twin Cinema. (That’s right, y’all…that theater had two screens.) The cinematic smorgasbord that followed set the standard for me. If it doesn’t have cool clothes, convincing creatures, archetypal battles, internal conflict, and Harrison Ford in it, I don’t want to see it.
That was true for a lot of other people, too, so it’s no wonder the resulting lines of merch have spanned the decades. There’s a great episode of The Toys that Made Us about the original line of action figures — you won’t believe how hard it was to convince toy manufacturers that there would be a market. But, beyond toys, there were lunchboxes, towels, and a 100% fabulous tape dispenser I would still give my right arm for:
but they’ll run you a cool 1000 galactic credits. I also remember being furious that you couldn’t get Luke Skywalker-themed Underoos for girls. Such limited thinking, and it’s still true even in the next millennium.
Still, as far as I’m aware, there was not a cookbook until the second, much-maligned trilogy came out, starting in the late 90s.
This is in the genre of somewhat gag-gift cookbooks, with recipes run entirely by the theme and not so much with regard for palatability. Since this one is also somewhat aimed at kids, it has an extra pseudo-healthy layer that bodes ill for the actual usefulness of the recipes. I bought this one used, and the pages are pristine. That’s always a bad sign…or is it?
It’s hard to tell from the photo, but the pages are laminated! Any food stains left by making a certain recipe repeatedly would wipe right off, so I don’t think we can tell whether any of these are good without trying them out. It was hard to pick one — the other pages hold such delights as Yoda Soda and Tusken Raider Taters — but the C3PO Pancakes stand out as a unique recipe. Plus, it’s breakfast time. Let’s make them!
Here are the main ingredients (baking powder and salt not pictured):
It’s an easy peasy recipe, fairly standard pancake ratios, although I’m a little concerned about how thick the batter is. A few lumps are okay, but in general I go for a thinner consistency for pancakes versus waffles.
However, once I started cooking them, I realized that thinner batter would make this recipe totally unworkable. It needs to stand pretty tall in order to encompass the pineapple slices. You pour 1/3 cup of the batter onto the pan as usual, add a pineapple ring, and then flip once you see those bubbles all over the surface. Even as it was, I had to press the edges of the pancakes down a bit so they would brown before the pineapple juice burned — the slices are just a couple of millimeters taller than the pancake even if you press them in a bit.
And that’s one of the things I find unfortunate about this kind of cookbook. They’re often the first one a kid gets, or at least the first they’re excited about, but because they are necessarily a bit contrived, sometimes the results are less than stellar (pun very much intended). Either the recipes take some tweaking to cook properly, or the flavors aren’t very good.
Still, although I initially felt like these pancakes looked more like the exploding Death Star or the Eye of Sauron than anything related to our ol’ pal Goldenrod, when I was editing the photos, I did realize they look something like his eyes!
As for their flavor, they’re a pancake only a Corellian freighter-sucking mynock could love. The pineapple is harder to cut through than the pancake, so they’re awkward to eat even though the cake part is too dense. The pancake around the fruit is a bit gummy because of the juice, even though I actually dried the rings a bit with a paper towel. The pineapple does have a wonderful grilled flavor, but as mentioned, it would be easy for it to tip to burned before the edges are browned. If you make these, you could consider using Rosa Parks’ wonderful Featherlite Pancakes recipe to replace the batter. Hers fluffs up so much that it might rise well to the height of the pineapple slices. You could also try making them in pancake ring molds.
As for gifting this kind of cookbook, just keep in mind that they can be discouraging to kids who haven’t really cooked before. If you’re going to be there to provide guidance, that can be okay, and the recipes might be just the thing to get them excited about making their own snacks or trying new things. If they make something that doesn’t taste amazing, though, see if you can have a trick to two ready to punch up flavor in a pinch.
Star Wars: Galactic Baking is much better, but it’s also not for novices. I love everything America’s Test Kitchen publishes, and their Complete Cookbook for Young Chefs is excellent — kid-friendly but reliable and delicious. If you’d like something thematic, The Disney Villain Cookbook is really good, with creative and impressive-looking recipes at multiple skill levels.
Whatever book you choose, may the force be with you. With recipes like this one, you’re going to need it.
Need food-first, picky eater-friendly, non-judgmental help with nutrition? You can schedule an appointment with me through Nourish here. I see lots of diabetes, neurodivergence, allergies and GI conditions, autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, and weight management whether for increase or decrease — adults, teens, and kids. We take most insurance, and most often, the copay is $0.
Zen and the Science of Candy Corn is a reader-supported publication that brings me great joy. You can literally give me your 2 cents with the tip jar button below!
Thanks so much for reading! But if you decided to subscribe, free or paid? I’d be the happiest nerfherder this side of the Dagobah System.
And feel free to share this post with any mynock-loving psychopaths you know.
Happy Star Wars Day! Too bad these didn't turn out. They look great!
Great points about kids recipe books.