Playing with food takes on a whole new different meaning with Nook.  At Nook, a D.I.Y Pancake House at Bukit Timah area, we got to experience making our own pancakes in whatever shape and size we want.  The Nook menu might look intimidating at first with its wide selection of toppings and sides but actually the way to making your first D.I.Y pancake is quite easily in the 4 steps in the picture below.

Anyway Nook – D.I.Y Pancake House is not just about pancakes.  If you are very hungry and can’t wait to make your own pancake (anyway making pancakes is very fast – just squeeze the pancake batter onto the hot griddle and wait 1-2 minutes and you are done!), you can also order from Nook’s ala carte menu e.g. The Breakfast Bully ($18) which comprises scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, sautéed mushrooms, baked beans, vine riped tomatoes and brioche (see picture below).  If you like creamy mushroom soup, you can also order Nook’s (erm.. well..) Creamy Mushroom Soup ($8.90) – it is very creamy and made with fresh mushrooms (duh! :-)).

When dining at Nook, you will find a black griddle right in the middle of your table – this is where the fun begins.  The controls of the griddle are easy – just 3 levels of heating that you would like to cook your pancakes.  To start, flip to the D.I.Y pancake page of the menu and make your selection for 1 or 2-flavored pancakes.  The flavoring will come in bottles of pancake batter so the more flavor you choose, the more colors you have to play with in making your pancakes.  Theoretically, each of these 1 or 2-flavored pancake set serves 2 but you can actually make a lot of pancakes with these small bottle of batter.

The 2-flavored pancake set costs $28 and comes with choice of 3 toppings (see picture below). Pancake syrup and margarine now comes free right at your table (thanks to feedback from other customers!).  This is a preview (non-exhaustive) of the type of pancake batter flavors, sweet toppings and sides you can order at Nook:

There are many ways to make your own pancake but after experimenting with a number of pancake designs (as you shall see in the later part of this post), this is our suggested step-by-step guide to making your pancakes (no need to follow strictly – after all we are not professional pancake makers).

• First, turn the heat to the lowest level – if the griddle is too hot, your pancake will turn dark very soon (and might even get burnt before you are done).
• Then draw the outline of what you had intended to draw.
• After which, fill within the outline with different flavor (color) of pancake batter (depending on how many flavors you had ordered in your set).
• You can use the toppings to further decorate your pancake for example in our case, we used the blueberries as eyes for the owl.
• When done, turn up the heat and bake the entire pancake!  There will be bubbles on your pancakes (due to air in the batter) so don’t worry about it.

We took our turns to do up different pancake designs starting from the traditional dragon head pancake.  You need not fill up the outline of the drawing – sometimes the outline will do but it will be difficult to pick up the entire outline and put it on your plate as it is (also consider the photo opportunity as there is a red patch in the middle of the griddle).

Next an airplane design with some yummy looking pancake clouds.  Make use of the different flavors (colors) to decorate your pancake drawings – let your imagination run wild – a green plane with red windows is just as yummy (pandan and strawberry-flavored pancake).

Next is an attempt on drawing the world famous Grumpy Cat – the Grumpy Cat pancake sure looks grumpy – likely because the drawing is pretty ugly :-p.  Don’t get overzealous with the size of your pancake because you will have to eat it after that (don’t waste food) or can consider starting small if you want to do a lot more pancake designs.

Strawberry pancake with oreo chips as toppings (and to fill in the bubbles in the strawberry :-)).  Very apt considering that the pink flavoring is strawberry-flavored!

Next – a strawberry-flavored Crab pancake…

A group project – depicting a colorful garden with flowers, grass, birds and if you can spot it – a grasshopper. 🙂

We spent about 2 hours at Nook and it was a lot of fun and we used up almost half of our two 2-flavored sets and…

…ending off with these pancake designs.

Our experience at Nook D.I.Y Pancake House was really fun – perfect for a relaxing weekend gathering with family and friends.  At $28 for a 2-flavored D.I.Y pancake set, it might seem expensive but if shared with a group of friends, it can seem like an affordable and yet fun gathering, albeit you will all just be eating pancakes but I believe you can eat your fill of pancakes (almost like a buffet of pancakes) with the generous tube of batter provided.  Furthermore, you can win prizes by making beautiful pancakes.

Customers at Nook can submit their pancake designs to Nook House of Pancake Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/nookpancakes.sg and win prizes under Nook’s Pancake Art Competition if the design is chosen as Pancake Art of the Month. Prizes changes every month so check with Nook’s staff if you are interested.

If you do not want to make your own pancakes, you can still order a selection of pancakes from Nook’s menu e.g. a Rainbow Pancake ($12) which contains layers of pancakes of different colors.  We didn’t order this but thought that it looked quite interesting from pictures from Nook’s facebook page – the picture below is a mini-Rainbow Pancake (which at this time is not available yet).

Nook D.I.Y House of Pancake

Address: 21 Lorong Kilat #01-03 Singapore 598123
If the address above sounds foreign, it is actually in Bukit Timah at a row of shophouses along Jalan Jurong Kechil – see map below.  A number of buses stop along Jalan Jurong Kechil and in a few year’s time, there will be a Downtown Line station just a few minutes away.

Opening Hours:
Tue-Fri: 12pm-10pm
Sat-Sun: 10am -10pm

Website: http://nook.sg/
Tel: 6466 1811