Is there anything more drool-worthy than a stack of pancakes smothered in syrup for breakfast? We don’t think so. But tell us–are you a short stack or a tall stack type of person? Or, better yet, a 28-foot in diameter pancake?!
Yeah, we’re not kidding.
36 years ago, on September 27, 1987, history was made in the Penn Yan village in the Finger Lakes Region when the world’s largest pancake was made at the 12th Annual Buckwheat Harvest Festival.
The monstrous pancake weighed in at a whopping 4,050 pounds, measuring 1 inch thick and 28 feet in diameter. And no toppings were spared after the the pancake was smothered in 15 gallons of gooey syrup along with a 68 pound pat of butter!
Naturally, a crowd up nearly 40,000 people gathered together from near and far to feast their eyes on the making of the pancake, which took an entire crew of people to make.
The pancake was so big that the batter–made using 15 gallons of cooking oil, 2,000 pounds of buckwheat, and 2,000 gallons of water–was mixed inside of a brand-new sterilized cement truck.
And, being we’ve never come across a spatula big enough to flip a 4,050 pound pancake, a crane was used instead.
After the pancake was made it was cut into chunks and sold at local churches for $1 a piece–and it fed 5,000 people! Though with a pancake this big the Finger Lakes Times reported that it was a bit “tough,” according to someone who tried a piece for themselves.
Penn Yan only made the pancake one time, and somehow, someway, the record for the world’s largest pancake was beat just seven years later in 1994 in Rochdale, England.
Alas, you can’t get a bite of the world’s largest pancake for yourself, but what you can do is gaze upon the griddle responsible for the pancake as it hangs on the outside wall of the Birkett Mills building in Penn Yan.
If only we were at the 12th Annual Buckwheat Harvest Festival!
📍 The Birkett Mills – 1 E Main St, Penn Yan