I’ve been secretly craving making pancakes out of birthday cake batter since I was told this story last year about being able to “taste the birthday.”

So when my little cousin was visiting and we needed breakfast, I stole him away to conspire with me. I had just snagged a great deal on leftover Halloween cake mixes that had black and orange sprinkles inside for $.29 a box. I usually make my own, but come on, for roughly a quarter a piece, the sprinkles themselves were worth that and I thought it’d be nice to have on hand.  Barring holding off until the following Halloween, though, I couldn’t think of a better use than being silly with a 5 year old.

And oh boy did we get our silly on. I doubt the moms were too thrilled, but then again, they were probably too hungover to care. Why get in the way of my a young boy’s fantasy?

It was his first time making a cake and being his meticulous self, I’ve never seen a boxed cake executed so precisely. His hard work paid off and his was tickled to death to watch them sizzling away on the griddle. “Look, K, look at what we’re making, come look, look!”

When they were finally done, though, we faced the issue of what to top them with. We couldn’t very well put regular syrup on them because that’s a lot of sugar and just sounds weird. And well, you can’t eat icing for breakfast, right? I opted to try mine with plain butter. B* had a better idea, though, and insisted on topping his with jelly.

Go big or go home, right?