While grabbing lunch this weekend in the Palisades, the wife and I stopped by the neighborhood Safeway for a few dinner ingredients. As I got out of the car, I noticed this huge poster on the side of Safeway, advertising a monstrosity called Batter Blaster. They’re pancakes in a can.

I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist. I had to try it. I’m a sucker for American food-science ingenuity, no matter how stupid it is. I still remember how cool it was when someone invented stackable potato chips. Batter Blaster may remind you of Kraft‘s Easy Cheese, but its maker is aiming higher than that much-maligned product. The wheat flour, cane sugar, egg solids, and soybean powder are all organic.

BB squirts its raw batter like whipped cream from a Co2 canister. The pancakes, however, contain more air than bubble wrap. You can see the little air pockets everywhere as the batter starts to brown in your skillet. It makes for a very airy pancake, which is not the same as light and fluffy, believe me. This thing had all the heft of a rice cake.

I could have lived with the hot-air issue, I guess, but I couldn’t swallow the hotcake’s flavor. They were sweet, probably from the cane sugar, but they were so sweet I ate them without a drop of syrup. And what’s a pancake without syrup?

In our house, it was dog food. Coltrane the beagle, by the way, loved them.