SWANTON, Vt. -- Townspeople Saturday cooked the world's largest pancake -- measuring nearly 20 feet across -- but hundreds of gallons of batter dribbled out when a helicopter stunt to help flip the massive flapjack flopped.
The yellow batter was made from 800 pounds of pancake mix and 100 gallons of milk churned in a steam-cleaned cement mixer. About 500 people watched as the batter was dumped in a 20-foot greased griddle and cooked over a charcoal pit for about an hour.
A crane then dropped a cover on the griddle and the container was to be flipped by a helicopter. But while suspended by the rigging, the pancake flipped on its own before the helicopter could help.
As it flipped, about one-fourth of the uncooked batter poured onto the field where the event was held.
What remained, when some of the 180 surgical-garb dressed volunteers lifted the cover, was about three-quarters of the pan covered with the remains of the pancake, some of it burnt.
'It looks like a pancake that's been flipped in the air and missed by a spatula,' said stunt organizer James Hilton.
'This piece is well done,' proclaimed Michael Cherrier, 21, of South Burlington, who paid $100 at an auction for the oppportunity to be the first to taste it.
The pancake was topped with 1,000 pounds of butter and 150 gallons of Vermont maple syrup, but one-quarter ton of blueberries never arrived.
'I want a piece of the burned part,' said Arthur Blouin Jr., 19, of St. Albans. 'I love burned pancakes and I love burned toast.'
The project, in the Vermont town just 10 miles from the Canadian border, was the latest and most ambitious in a series of feats conceived by Hilton, the recreation director in nearby St. Albans.
'It's better than Mom's,' said Hilton, munching on his chunk. Despite the disappointment of the crowd over the failure of the helicopter to help flip the flapjack, he declared it a success.
'We flipped it, right?,' he said. 'Another thing is, we have enough pancake to serve everybody here.
Hilton, whose previous projects have included the world's tallest snowman and biggest ice cream sundae, conceived the pancake stunt to promote the Franklin County Field days.
A film crew from the television show Ripley's Believe It Or Not was on hand to capture the event and officials said they were hopeful the feat would be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.
