Flip This: Top 10 Pancake Records

Call it a pancake, griddle cake or crepe, Americans love their pancakes.

In fact, we love pancakes so much the international IHOP restaurant chain sells more than 700 million of them a year.

In thanks for this public support and to celebrate National Pancake Day, IHOP will once again give away millions of its signature buttermilk pancakes between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. on Feb. 23. (Check to verify your local IHOP is participating in the fundraiser.) In return, IHOP asks guests make a voluntary donation to support local children's hospitals through the Children's Miracle Network.

In honor of this hallowed event, Coupon Sherpa has compiled the following top 10 pancake records. (Some records have been updated since publication of the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records.)

1. Tallest Stack of Pancakes - 29.5 inches
Chefs Sean McGinlay and Natalie King of Glasgow’s Hilton Grosvenor hotel created a pile containing 672 pancakes on August 2008. The chefs mixed about 100 eggs, more than 17 pints of milk, 11 pounds of flour and 6.6 pounds of butter for the challenge.

 

2. Pancake Flipping- 416 flips
The flipping record, tossed on June 6, 1997 by Ralf Laue of Germany, represents the number of times a single pancake can be tossed in two minutes. The pancake recipe must b made using 6 ounces of batter and flipped in a frying pan weighing at least 12 ounces with a base measurement of 6 inches.

 

3. Oldest Pancake Race- Instituted in 1445
The Annual Pancake Race in the village of Olney, England dates back five centuries. According to the legend, when the church bells rang for Shrove Tuesday service in the year 1445, a housewife wasn't finished grilling the cakes. Not wishing to ruin her pancakes, she ran to the church with pan in hand. In memory of this housewife, women in Olney compete every Shrove Tuesday in a 415-yard race in which they must carry a pancake in a skillet.

 

4. Most Famous Pancake on the Internet - Bunny Oolong
Hironori Akutagawa of Japan took photographs of his very patient pet rabbit wearing a pancake and posted it on the Internet. Oolong  rapidly became known as "The Pancake Bunny" when the picture became ubiquitous on forums and Web sites with the caption, “I have no idea what you’re talking about… so here’s a bunny with a pancake on its head.” Over the course of Oolong’s short life, Akutagawa took hundreds of photographs of the rabbit balancing a wide variety of small, light objects on its head. Oolong passed in 2003, but Photoshopped variations continue to feature the bunny balancing other objects on his head.

 

5. Largest Pancake- 3 tons (6.614 pounds)
The Co-operative Union Ltd of Manchester, England created a pancake measuring 49 feet, 2.55 inches in diameter on August 13, 1994 in Rochdale, England. The pancake weighed three tons and contained an estimated two-million calories.

 

6. Highest Pancake Toss - 28 feet, 6 inches
John Young, owner of Chris Cakes in New Albany, made the monumental toss on Dec. 11, 2009 to raise funds for a paralyzed friend. Young broke the previous record of 26 feet, 6 inches, set by another Chris Cakes pancake flipper earlier in the year.

 

7. Most Pancakes Made by an Individual in One Hour- 956 pancakes
Steve Hamilton, owner of pancake-house Chris Cakes of Indiana, cooked and served 956 pancakes on May 6, 2009 at Louisberg Middle School in Missouri. Hamilton previously broke the record with 555 pancakes on June 23, 2006 but was beaten in 2008 by Canadian Bob Blumer with 559 pancakes. Hamilton claims to have flipped 34,000,000 pancakes in his lifetime. "Laid end-to-end, they would stretch from Los Angeles to Springfield, Ill."

 

8. Most Pancakes Made in 8 Hours - 76,382 pancakes
300 volunteer cooks served approximately 20,000 people on May 9, 2009 in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park. Thirty-eight griddles were used to cook almost 6,000 pounds of batter. Hungry attendees topped their pancakes with 136 gallons of maple syrup and 365 pounds of butter, washing them down with more than 1,000 gallons of water and orange juice. The Atlanta event broke the previous record of 66,459 pancake set in February 2009 by the Lions Club of Lubbock, Texas. However, Lubbock still holds the title of "Pancake Capital of the World," as designated by the Texas legislature in 2009.

 

9. Most Watched Pancake Video on YouTube- "Pancakes II - Pancakes for Your Face" with 3,613,330 views
The stop-action video by GiR2007 was posted March 9, 2009 as a sequel to the bouncy "Pancakes," posted by the same author on August 13, 2006. "Pancakes has been viewed 3,254,184 times as of Pancake Day 2010.

 

10. Most Pancakes Eaten by One Person - Male-72, Female-48
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, "We have no records for eating pancakes. We tend to have eating records around food that is normally difficult to eat, or not as pleasant...such as garlic cloves, onion, ketchup, etc." Unofficially, the male record is 72 pancakes and the female record is 48 pancakes eaten at one event. Other details were not available.

 

Tweet