The Best Sheet Pan Swedish Pancakes Recipe: Puffy and Eggy

This Sheet Pan Swedish Pancakes recipe is a weekly staple in our family these days. And for good reason!

Loaded with healthy, protein-packed eggs, whisked to a smooth batter with flour and milk, and baked to a golden, puffy, crispy-on-the-outside-and-tender-in-the-middle perfection, this is a delicious and quick hot, satisfying breakfast.

It brings our whole family to the table eager to sit down and dig in!

And my method of using baking paper to line the sheet pans means clean up is a BREEZE!

This is one of our favorite meals to eat, and we hope you try it with your family and enjoy it as well!

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Why Sheet Pan Pancakes Are the Best Breakfast Hack for Families

Sheet pan pancakes are one of my favorite breakfast hacks for our family. In fact, I made a recipe for sheet pan pancakes incorporating zucchini and chocolate because we eat sheet pan pancakes in every season!

Why? Because all the pancakes get cooked at once, and you can actually sit down together to a hot breakfast as a family!

I grew up in a family that enjoyed pancakes, but even though my mom had a large griddle for our stove top, I rarely remember eating pancakes with my mom at the table.

Regular pancakes require a lot of hands on time to make. Pouring the batter, watching for bubbles, flipping the pancakes, waiting for the 2nd side to cook, scooping off and delivering to the table: pancakes are a lot of work!

If you’re making for one or two people, cool. Breakfast can require that much work.

But when you’re cooking to feed a family of six, that’s a LOT of pancakes, or you need a REALLY big griddle. (This is when my parents’ new 36-inch Blackstone comes in really handy! At least Mom gets to enjoy eating pancakes with the grandkids these days!)

But if you don’t have a large griddle and you DO want to have intentional time together at the table as a family with a hot breakfast, sheet pan pancakes are a fantastic alternative.

Let the oven do the cooking work for you all at once, and you can enjoy a hot meal with your kids, no stress.

Bonus: these tender pancakes are easy to dice up and let your just-starting-solids babies gnaw on!

Swedish Pancakes vs. American Pancakes: What’s the Difference?

If you are unfamiliar with Swedish Pancakes, they are traditionally a flour-milk-egg-butter (and sometimes sugar) batter that are cooked in a hot pan.

They form thin, round cakes which are usually rolled up with a topping inside.

They differ from American style pancakes in that they don’t contain a leavening agent.

As a result, American style pancakes are thick and puffy, usually 1/2 inch (1+ cm) tall, and they stay that way, even as they cool.

Swedish pancakes, on the other hand, are not paper thin, but they resemble something more like a crepe or a tortilla in their thickness.

As this fascinating article from the Smithsonian website on pancakes shares, pancakes are a staple food – often for the working class – in cultures all over the world.

So although they vary a little – customized to the cultures and ingredients around them – Swedish pancakes and American pancakes serve the same purpose: feeding people with the readily available ingredients on hand.

Essential Ingredients for Swedish Pancakes

The ingredient list for Swedish Pancakes is short and simple, which is fantastic for a busy mom on a busy morning! You’ll need:

• Eggs (2 for every person)
• Flour (1/2 cup for each person)
• Milk (3/4 cup for each person – I use whole milk. I think it would work OK with 2%, but the texture might get progressively less fluffy if you cut the fat content too much)
• salt (just a pinch for each person)
• Butter (technically, this isn’t an essential ingredient in my recipe, and I’ve made these pancakes without butter, but for the best flavor, you need it! 1-2 Tbsp per baking sheet)

That’s it! Having such a short ingredient list is one of the reasons Sheet Pan Swedish Pancakes come together fast, even for a large family.

Essential Tools for Sheet Pan Swedish Pancakes

The tools you need for Sheet Pan Swedish Pancakes are low tech and basic. They include:

• Large mixing bowl (I like to use a non-slip, 3-quart mixing bowl like this)
• Whisk
• Measuring Cups (1/4 cup, 1/2 cup, and 1 cup would all be helpful)
• spoon (you can use a 1 tsp measuring spoon if you want – I usually just eye ball it for the salt)
• Baking Sheets (I use 2 large baking sheets to make this breakfast for my family – you’ll want them to have the lip on them around the edges)
• Baking Paper (You’ll want it to come up over the lip of the baking sheets)

Step-by-Step Guide to Perfect Sheet Pan Swedish Pancakes

Swedish pancakes are the best when they have the right texture: smooth, puffy, slightly crispy on the outside but tender on the inside.

And that perfect texture is accomplished by how you make Swedish Pancakes.

Step 1: place your baking sheets inside your oven and preheat your oven. You need your oven to be HOT when you place the pancake batter in the oven in order to get the best “puff” in the pancakes. So get that oven heating up to temperature while you make the batter.

You also want your baking sheets to be hot when you get ready to pour the batter into them, so you might as well toss them in the oven and let them heat up too.

Step 2: crack all your eggs into a bowl and whisk them well. You want them smooth.

Step 3: Add your flour in 1/2 cup intervals to the eggs, and whisk smooth between each flour addition.

This step is really important. You want the flour fully incorporated into the eggs and no lumps.

As you near the end of your flour addition, the batter will be starting to get thick. IF it is so thick that you can’t whisk everything smooth, go ahead and add 1/2 cup of milk.

You’ll add the rest of the milk in the next step, so deduct the amount of milk you add from the total amount of milk you’ll need.

Step 4: Whisk in your milk in 1/2 cup intervals. Whisk each 1/2 cup of milk into the batter to keep the consistency smooth the whole time.

Step 5: Sprinkle salt into the batter and give it a final whisk.

Step 6: Pull the baking sheets out of the oven, line with baking paper (also known as Parchment Paper), and then spread 1-2 Tbsp of butter all over the parchment paper.

Step 7: Pour the batter into the baking sheets on top of the melted, spread butter. You can use a ladle to measure the batter equally into however many baking sheets you are using, but I typically just eyeball/estimate it.

Step 8: Bake the Sheet Pan Swedish Pancakes!

Step 9 (Optional): Once the pancakes come out of the oven (puffy!), gently spread another 1-2 Tablespoons of butter over the top of the pancakes, if desired.

How to Get the Perfect Texture: More Tips for Fluffy, Light Swedish Pancakes

As I mentioned in the step-by-step instructions, whisking the eggs well is important. This helps with the fluffiness of the Swedish pancakes.

And incorporating the flour into the batter and whisking out all the lumps is also important before adding the milk.

If you dump the milk into the eggs and flour mixture without it being smooth, you’re likely to end up with lumps in your batter, and since the milk makes the batter pretty runny, it’ll be hard to chase down all those lumps!

I’ve also found that FRESH eggs whisk up really nicely, and if you have a way to source some raw milk, oh my. You’re in for a treat!

Full fat, fresh, raw milk makes these Sheet Pan Swedish Pancakes SHINE.

But you can get lovely, fluffy pancakes with store bought milk. I do recommend whole milk, though!

And lastly, make sure that oven is HOT when you put the pancake batter in. If the temperature is too low, it tends to bake into sort of a thick slab of eggy pudding.

It still tastes OK, but the fluffiness is part of the real joy of Swedish pancakes!

Topping Ideas: How to Dress Up Your Swedish Pancakes

We have cycled through a variety of toppings, but of course, get creative with this!

Some of our favorites include:

• Lemon Juice and Powdered Sugar: when it is lemon season, this is our go-to topping. We just wedge up some lemons and put them in a bowl on the table and squeeze them over the powdered sugar
• Maple Syrup: Our kids love using the classic North American syrup on their pancakes.
• Jam: Raspberry, Strawberry, Plum, Boysenberry, Blueberry, Apricot, etc – it’s all delicious! Of course, if you can get your hands on Lingonberry jam, that would be an authentic experience to have with Swedish Pancakes!
• Fresh Fruit and Whipped Cream: Stawberries, Blueberries, Raspberries, Nectarines, or any other fruit you fancy with a dollop of fluffy whipped cream is a fantastic way to use Sheet Pan Swedish Pancakes, too!

How to Make a Double Batch of Swedish Pancakes for a Family Breakfast

This recipe, as written, makes a generous breakfast for a family of six (we don’t usually have anything else with our Sheet Pan Swedish Pancakes – just the pancakes and toppings).

But if you do need to scale it differently, you can follow this simple formula:

For each person you are feeding, you’ll need 2 eggs, 1/2 cup of flour, and 3/4 cup of milk.

The Best Way to Serve and Store Your Sheet Pan Pancakes

For serving our pancakes, we cut them into approximate squares and dish out squares to everyone in the family.

You can cut them into small squares (3-4 inches/8-10 cm) if you have a variety of toppings that your family will want to sample.

Or you can cut them into big squares (6 inch / 15 cm) and keep little ones busy for longer as they eat up what is on their plates!

Sheet Pan Swedish Pancakes are best enjoyed fresh and hot! I don’t usually make them in advance. However, we do occasionally have leftover pancakes.

Leftovers can be stored in a container (I am slowly migrating over to glass storage containers), or, in a pinch, a plastic zip bag. But the zip bag will likely result in the shape of the pancake getting deformed a bit.

You can keep them in the fridge up to 5 days. Reheat in the microwave for 30 seconds to enjoy a leftover Sheet Pan Swedish Pancake square as a snack.

Gather Your Ingredients – Sheet Pan Swedish Pancakes Are Just a Few Steps Away!

Are you ready to make a simple but oh-so-satisfying breakfast? If so, whip up this family-friendly batch of Sheet Pan Swedish Pancakes and enjoy a filling, simple, hot meal with your family.

I hope it provides a way for you to sit down and connect with the people you love the most!

Let me know in the comments below how they turned out, and what you topped them with!