Dancakes Owner/Artist/Webmaster – Benjamin Daniel (St. Louis, MO)

Benjamin Daniel
Co-Owner/Artist/Webmaster
Saint Louis, MO

How’d you get into pancake art?

Dumb luck, mostly.

I met the founders of Dancakes filling in for drums in their band, no clue that pancake art was a thing or that it had made them internet famous. I thought it was awesome, but I never thought, “Man, I’ve gotta get in on that pancake art game,”.

Fast forward to the summer of 2015 and I had talked Dan into going on tour with me, music and pancake art. It was a wild adventure, but Dan had to fly out for a comic-con gig during the tour and miss a show.

With few options available Dan said, “Well, do you wanna learn how to do it?”
“Ummmm… Sure. Why not?” was my over eager reply.

So after a quick crash course in his step-mom’s kitchen I drove to Austin in a blistering thunderstorm and made terrible pancake art and played (hopefully good) music for some awesome folks.

Fast forward to now and I’m jetting all over the world making pancake faces, befuddled to how the heck I fell into this line of work. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but neither do most things in life. Just enjoy.

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  How Becoming a Pancake Artist Turned Me Into a Full-Stack Developer – Pt. 2 by Benjamin Daniel (03/15/2021) If you haven’t read Part 1, you may want to backtrack a bit and give it a glance, for the sake of context… Or not. Totally up to you. 🙂 Alright, we’ve got the site up. Everything seems to work like a real web page. What else is there to do? It works now, it’ll […] Posted In: Dancakes Stories

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  How Becoming a Pancake Artist Turned Me Into a Full-Stack Developer Pt. 1 by Benjamin Daniel (03/06/2021) It wasn’t supposed to be this way. At no point in time during my journey to becoming a full-time pancake artist did anyone ask, “Hey, do you know anything about web development?”. Yet, here we are, 6 years into a being a professional pancake artist and 3 years into being a full-stack developer. I’ll take […] Posted In: Dancakes Stories

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  JOP EP41 – “My ganglia remain unconvinced” by Benjamin Daniel (12/05/2020) “What time is the stream supposed to start?” Dana inquired. I replied, with all the confidence of an untrained lion tamer, “Ummmm… In…. 4 minutes.”  This exchange was happening while sitting at one of our editing bays, endlessly scrolling through images, looking for an ounce of inspiration for the stream that obviously wasn’t starting in […] Posted In: Joy of Pancakes
• Pancake Art Livestream Roundup – October 25, 2020 by Benjamin Daniel (10/29/2020) After a week off due to some upgrades to our studio we’re back! handled the majority of the requests this week while managed the stream.  We had lots of great requests from the chat and some really generous donations that we appreciate tremendously.  A big thank you to Skylar and Leo for their donations this […] Posted In: Livestreams
• JOP25 | Mental Photography by Benjamin Daniel (10/28/2020) Not sure how many of you are aware, but I’ve spent a lot of time dabbling in photography. I originally bought my camera and lenses for video production, and promptly proceeded to do very little of it. Luckily my camera (Sony A7S II) also happens to take really nice photos. It has a fairly low […] Posted In: Joy of Pancakes
• Pancake Art Livestream Roundup – October 4 & 11, 2020 by Benjamin Daniel (10/17/2020) Oh October, what a strange transitional month. Part of that transition this year involved me dropping the ball on posting these donation requests in a timely fashion. So apologies to anyone that donated and has been like, “Dude, where my pancake pic?”. That’s on me. I spent a whole lot of time of time reminding […] Posted In: Livestreams
• Pancake Art Livestream Roundup – September 27, 2020 by Benjamin Daniel (10/01/2020) This was my first livestream… Or really pancake art that I’ve made in a while. It’s been a strange existence during the pandemic, and most of my responsibilities have fallen into the web development, IT and production side. I definitely have some rust to shake off, but it feels rather nice to be able to […] Posted In: Livestreams
• Pancake Art Livestream Roundup – September 20, 2020 by Benjamin Daniel (09/23/2020) One more down and ?? to go. took the reigns on this stream while I () manned the cameras and moderated the chat. Though I did make the two lovely cats on the end. I think next week we’re going to… “flip” roles. See that? I made a pancake pun. Funny stuff. Anyways! Big thanks […] Posted In: Livestreams

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  Pancake Art Livestream Donation Roundup – August 30, 2020 by Benjamin Daniel (09/01/2020) Another Sunday has passed, and another donation livestream has occurred! I’d like to thank Reece, Kaithlyn, Beth, Kaitlin, and Kerry for their donations and great pancake art requests. They really help us in keeping the lights on in these strange times.  See you all next week! Posted In: Dancakes Updates

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  Pancake Art Livestream Donation Roundup – August 09, 2020 by Benjamin Daniel (08/10/2020) All of the donation requests from our requests only pancake art livestream on August 09, 2020. Posted In: Dancakes Updates

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  Pancake Art Livestream Donation Roundup – August 02, 2020 by Benjamin Daniel (08/05/2020) You request ’em, we make em! Here’s all of our donation requests from this previous livestream. Big thanks to everyone that donated, you’ve earned a special place in our hearts. 💖 Posted In: Dancakes Updates

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  Pancake Art Livestream Donation Roundup – July 26, 2020 by Benjamin Daniel (07/28/2020) Another weekend gone, and another fantastic livestream under our belts. We want to that watched and donated from the bottom of our hearts, every little bit goes a long way towards keeping the lights on in our pancake art studio during these crazy and difficult times.  We had a lot of great requests, and rather […] Posted In: Dancakes Updates

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  Chaos & Structure – Pancake Art in the Era of COVID-19 by Benjamin Daniel (06/13/2020) What does an events company do when events are no longer thing? I guess we're about to find out. Posted In: Dancakes Updates

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  The Dancakes Team Reflects on the Past Year by Benjamin Daniel (01/01/2020) 2019 was one of the most fruitful years in Dancakes short history. So much has happened, and is happening that we thought we should get the Dancakes Team to mark some of our highlights from our last revolution around the sun while we barrel forward into the next one at 67,000 mph. Posted In: Dancakes Updates

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  The Why, How & History of the Dancakes Name by Benjamin Daniel (11/12/2019) We get a lot of questions about why we use the name “Dancakes”, which is fair, only one of our chef’s jackets has the name “Dan” on it. What usually follows is an abbreviated answer about why we decided to keep the name. Now, I’m more than happy to keep answering that question until the […] Posted In: Dancakes Stories

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  Comfort is a Trap, Don’t Fall for It by Benjamin Daniel (09/18/2019) Purpose is a welcome curse. A spell cast upon you that gives you a drive and ambition to achieve something. It permeates your thoughts and informs nearly every decision you make. You invest money and time into planting seeds that may never bloom, and if they don’t, you go back and do it all over again. Posted In: Personal/Opinion

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  How I Met Daniel Drake and Became a Dancakes Artist by Benjamin Daniel (07/23/2019) It was a hot day in Austin, which isn’t saying much. When isn’t it hot in Austin? It would probably be more interesting to start this story with, “It was an inconceivably cold day in Austin,” But alas, truth, no matter how insignificant rues the day...

  Continue reading

  Posted In: Dancakes Stories

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  Welcome to the NEW Dancakes.com! by Benjamin Daniel (07/06/2019) The only constant in life is change, and here we are again, the same place but a different destination. I’ve spent the last couple of months piecing together this site in whatever off time I’ve had from our ridiculous pancaking adventures. Going through multiple iterations and ideas to try and land on something simple, fast, […] Posted In: Dancakes Updates

What's the weirdest request you've ever gotten?

Weird is relative. And in this job trying to figure out the “weirdest” request is like trying to figure out what river has the wettest water.

However, I think I might have the answer. In this instance, context is everything.

I was making pancake art at a 5th grade graduation party in 2016, and even though they’re just kids they’re obviously aware of the fact an election is happening that year. They know who the candidates are, but beyond that not much, they’re only 10 years old, politics is still a few years away.

As was the norm for that year, I made both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton pancakes. It was all very benign though, they just wanted to see these people they keep seeing on TV in pancake form. I was happy to oblige.

Then a little kid came up to me, short, red hair, freckles all over… He looked like Howdy Doody, aka, an adorable kid.

He looked at me and said, “Could I get Hillary behind bars?”

All I could think was, “Woah, I wonder where you learned that from.” (And I’m not sure if I’d wanna know)

So, I did my job and made him what he requested. It was quite the challenge to since you have to draw the bars first and then figure out what pieces of the face to show through the empty spaces, which is not easy to say the least.

Are there any things you still struggle with in pancake art?

Cars.

Not straight on or from the side, but the 3/4 skewed perspective. Doing two point perspective without any guides to help is really challenging for me. I’m always glad when someone requests one though because I get a little better every time!

What's your favorite breakfast restaurant?

There’s a little place on the southside of St. Louis (my home) called “Southwest Diner“. They are by far my favorite breakfast spot anywhere in the world (And I’ve eaten at SO many).

 

What's the coolest place you've traveled to?

Probably Hong Kong. We got to spend a week just wandering around the city and only had to do any real work one day. I took my camera and got some pretty amazing photos, we saw some absolutely stunning sites and Dan and I went out one night and found a little speakeasy with an open mic/jam and I got to sit in for about an hour on drums with a couple of amazing musicians. It was a pretty magical experience and it really cemented how lucky I am to be part of this pancake circus.

Are your pancakes edible?

Not only are they edible, they’re actually pretty delicious. Not long after I met Dan, and long before I ever tried pancake art I tried one of Dan’s pancakes at a show we were playing at the Heavy Anchor.

I honestly didn’t have high expectations, but they were really, really good. Was it the best pancake I ever had? No. But it was still pretty darn delicious.

Pineapple on pizza?

Heckin yeah.