Meet The Man Behind The Viral Pancakes

The amazing thing about YouTube is that it lets us see some really unique and creative work out there. And when that creativity is paired with food – no one can resist.

Enter Nathan Shields, a full time father of two, who decided one day to make some pancakes for his children. His two children were so excited by the creations that he began refining his pancake-making craft – thus Saipancakes was born.

You probably would have seen his videos going around, zoomed onto a hot pan with a skillet in one hand and a bottle full of pancake batter in another. When he begins squeezing out random designs onto the pan, it almost looks like a hot mess – far from the beautiful round pancakes we’ve been taught to love. But when he flips it around – it looks like magic.

And it is this magic that has earned him over 30,000 subscribers on YouTube.

We reached out to Nathan, who stays in the US. Turns out the name of the video series – Saipancakes – was named after Saipan, where Nathan and his family stayed for a period of time.

“We were living in Saipan at the time, and I decided to try making some truck-shaped pancakes for my kids, who were 1 and 3,” said Nathan. “They were excited, so I tried to improve my technique the next weekend, letting some parts of the designs darken before finishing them. It continued from there.”

Up to that point, Nathan had been a math teacher, a fact evident from his Pancake tool, Pangraph, which he uses to make what he calls Spirocakes. The plans for the tool are available on request, and at a small but reasonable price.

“I’m not sure what the future holds for that invention, but I’m still working on improving it now.”

When asked which pancake creation was his favourite, Nathan pointed out his latest video on ape pancakes, which shows him using batter with varying amounts of hot chocolate mix blended in. The results are pretty darn amazing, and they look delicious!

But while the pancakes look good to us, Nathan says that they actually taste “pretty average”. In fact, it doesn’t seem that he cooked much else other than pancakes, as when we asked what else he enjoys cooking, he simply said: “I’m fortunate that my wife enjoys cooking more than I do.”

You can find Nathan Shields on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, to see the many beautiful pancake creations that he has made for his family. If you’re willing to pay, he even does commission pancakes!