How to make perfect Mickey Mouse pancakes and Minnie Mouse fruit cut-outs

I'm always looking for ways to connect and do really fun, hands-on things with my girls and one of our favorite places to spend time together is in the kitchen. Anabelle especially loves making food and cooking with me, so I was absolutely thrilled when I found out that Disney was coming out with a new line of kitchen products called Disney Eats designed with the whole family in mind. They're super kid friendly, easy to use and really affordable and I can't wait to show you more.

Disney Fruit Cut-outs

First of all, my girls have a crazy obsession with melons. You would think I'm giving them cotton candy or something when I pull out a watermelon because they will eat one like there's no tomorrow, so Anabelle was BEYOND excited when I showed her that we could cut out cantaloupe and watermelon in Disney inspired shapes like Minnie Mouse's bow and silhouette!

She was not as excited to share a bite with mama hahaha.

Disney Eats

After we had some fun cutting out melons into shapes, Lyla woke up and wanted to join in. So we decided to try out the other Disney Eats tools by making some homemade pancakes! We used our favorite recipe, my mom's Southern Buttermilk Pancakes, but obviously you can totally use a pancake mix with these and get great results too (and your kids prob won't notice the difference ha).

The girls LOVED taking turns dumping the measured ingredients into their mixing bowls! Lyla wasn't as good about letting me help her measure, so I just kind of let her make her own version of batter while Ani and I made the measured good stuff. I love that the Disney Eats spatulas, whisks, spoons and mixing bowls come in a mini and full size!

Sorry kids, cracking eggs is where I draw the line ha! But they literally helped with everything else 😉

They took this cooking gig very seriously!

These were the hands raised for “who wants to eat some pancakes now?!”

Okay some tips on using these awesome silicone mold sets, that by the way are a LIFESAVER if you've ever been a frustrated parent trying to make your kids a perfect mickey pancake that ends up being a big blob that looks like an uneven circle. It took me a couple tries to figure out and then it was so easy!!

First of all, make sure your batter is pretty thin, almost runny. This will allow your pancake to set up easily and not be too thick and spread out once you lift the silicone shape. Second, make sure you only put a very thin layer of batter inside each silicone mold. If you have too much batter inside your silicone mold, it will just spread out into a blob the minute you lift the form. I also found it best if you put the mold down so the side with the lip faces toward you, so it's easy to lift off the griddle once the first side sets up, then you can flip the pancake in its set form. Third tip, if you spray the silicone mold with some kind of cooking spray before you use it, your batter won't stick to the silicone mold. Lastly, I found it easiest to make sure I only put a thin layer of batter into the mold if I just used a spoon to spoon the batter in, instead of pouring directly from the bowl (which goes a little too fast for me!).