Pancake Day is the most important day in our calendar. We really like pancakes. Like, really like pancakes. So when we do pancake day, we like to do it hard. We’re talking pancakes for breakfast, pancakes for lunch, and pancakes for dinner. If you think that sounds ridiculous, or if you’re wondering how we manage to eat pan-fried carbs all day and get in all the food groups, then we present to you our very own guide on how to have your (pan) cake and eat it too. Provided you have the facilities to use a hob and a pan, that is.

Breakfast is the most traditional time of day to eat pancakes. But this doesn’t mean that pancake day of all days should just follow the plain, bog standard pancakes for breakfast that you’d have on any other morning. Try sprucing up a normal pancake recipe by adding blueberries or chocolate chips into the batter for a sweet hit, or shoving a few overripe bananas (mashed up) into the mix for a thicker, American-style pancake that also gets rid of the bad banana smell in your kitchen. Your taste buds (and flatmates, who are sick of smelling mouldy bananas every time they walk into the kitchen to make a cup of tea) will thank you.

“Anything’s a pancake if you’re brave enough.”

For toppings, think sweet but substantial. Peanut butter, sliced fruit, and a touch of granola are the perfect staples for a breakfast that is protein-filled and hearty enough to fuel a Sidgwick essay crisis. Crucially, though, they are also still tasty.

Pancakes may be a breakfast staple, but why stop there? In the term-time chaos of Cambridge, pancakes are a perfect quick and easy meal that can be cheffed up in 10 minutes between supervisions. Green onion pancakes are a perfect flaky, savoury bite – and thick, starchy courgette pancakes are an equally delicious lunch choice that can be topped with sriracha and salad. Equally, skip cooking altogether: who says that tortillas aren’t pancakes? Throw one in a pan (after all, what really is a pancake if not just a round thing in a pan?), slap some hot sauce and cheese on it, and you have a full lunch. Bon appetit.

“If it’s a carb, and you can stack them and then put toppings atop the stack, then it’s fundamentally a pancake based meal”

You may think that at dinner time you must have your pancakes for dessert. This is not, in fact, the case. Pancakes are a whole, valid meal, and we ought to treat them as such. You may want to stay traditional, and go for a more filling buttermilk style pancake, or you might want to be cooler than everyone else and go slightly more rogue. After all, what really is a pancake? Let’s play hard and fast with the rules. It is pancake day, after all. If it’s a carb, and you can stack them and then put toppings on the stack, then it’s fundamentally a pancake-based meal.

Stack of naan, topped with curry? That’s a form of pancake. A couple of tortillas, topped with chilli? Also a form of pancake. Half a loaf of bread, toasted, topped with a whole tin of Heinz beans, sprinkled with a little grated cheddar? Pancakes. Some people might tell you that these dinners are not, in fact, pancakes, but I reckon they had something boring for tea – like a jacket potato. Boring.

If this sort of unconventionality upsets you, or if you prefer to celebrate pancake day in a slightly more conservative manner, then you can go down the more traditional route of having your dinner time pancakes for dessert. Lemon and sugar is always respectable, as well as a little vanilla.

Yet, why stop there? Pancake day only comes once a year, and you deserve to have as many pancakes as you can keep down in the waking day. If you've pulled a late shift in the library, or have been at pres ramping up for a night out, spoil yourself with some midnight pancakes. And, let’s face it, crisps are sort of round and sort of fried. So if you’re feeling really lazy, they count as pancakes too. Ditto biscuits. Round and made with flour, sugar, and milk? That’s a pancake. Anything’s a pancake if you’re brave enough. In fact, if you squint your eyes (or just get really drunk) then that Gardies kebab you scranned at 3am is technically a pancake as well.