On New Year’s Eve, I had consumed a couple of beers while sitting on the couch—as one does—and saw a promo for a sale on a hardback cookbook. It just so happened to be The Official Marvel Spider-Man Cookbook and I just knew I had to have it. So I impulse-purchased it and had it in my hands a couple of days later.
I was a pretty big Spider-Man fan as a kid and I still enjoy reading stories about Peter’s (and now Miles’) adventures and watching their movies. I decided I’d find some recipes in the cookbook to turn into sandwiches so I started on a bit of brainstorming and research—also known as reading.
What is this sandwich?
This sandwich takes the ingredients and concepts of two recipes in the Official Marvel Spider-Man Cookbook, twists them up with a few changes, and then turns it all into a great breakfast-themed adventure. For the sandwich internals, I take inspiration from one of New York’s favorite sandwiches, the chopped cheese, and then slide it in between two of Aunt May’s wheatcakes.
Aunt May’s wheatcakes
If you aren’t familiar with Marvel Comics or if maybe you only read Archie comics, the original Spider-Man is a person named Peter Parker who wears a tight suit and a mask and spends his time swinging around New York City being friendly and fighting crime. Peter’s parents died when he was young, and he was raised by his father’s brother, Ben Parker, and Ben’s wife, Maybelle Parker.
Way back in 1962, in a comic that showcased the very first appearance of Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15, Aunt May is shown serving Peter his favorite breakfast which appears to be a large stack of pancakes, or wheatcakes.
Technically all pancakes are made from wheat flour but they’re usually made from all-purpose flour or white flour which is made from only the endosperm of the wheat grain resulting in a flour that is lighter in texture and flavor.
For some reason, the mention of these almost-pancakes became a gimmick or shtick in Spider-Man comics and Aunt May’s version of wheatcakes has been mentioned dozens if not hundreds of times throughout the years. Thirty-four years after this first appearance the writers of Spider-Man finally unveiled a special recipe for Aunt May’s wheatcakes in the 1996 Untold Tales of Spider-Man Annual issue.
1996 Untold Tales of Spider-Man Annual
There are tons of mentions of wheatcakes all through the years of Spider-man comics. But wheatcakes were fully addressed in this 1996 Annual.
And then later in the issue, Spidey reveals that the next page is going to have the longest-kept secret in the world of Spider-Man to date.
It’s wheatcakes!
Next generation wheatcakes
I was wholly unaware of Aunt May’s wheatcakes until a few years ago. I grew up reading Spider-Man comics but I somehow missed all the mentions throughout the years.
I learned about Aunt May’s wheatcakes in 2021 after I played the new-to-me Marvel’s Spider-Man game that came out for PlayStation platforms in 2018. It was a Spectacularly fun game that really seemed to bring Spidey’s web-slinging to life (that game has since been followed by Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2).
In Marvel’s Spider-Man, there was a specific set of side quests where you would look for Peter’s old backpacks that he’d lost and as you found each one, the gameplay would stop for a second while Peter Parker would reminisce about his history or the items that he found in each backpack. One of the lost-then-found backpacks contained a handwritten index card with the recipe for May Parker’s Famous Wheatcakes.
Aunt May’s wheatcake recipe differences
Aunt May’s wheatcake recipe in the Official Spider-Man Cookbook and the recipe that was published way back in 1996 are pretty different. I cooked both of them to see which one I enjoyed better. They both contained whole wheat flour and buttermilk but otherwise, the ingredient lists are fairly different.
Differences in ingredient lists:
1996 Untold Tales of Spider-Man recipe
- 1 cup buckwheat flour
- 1 cup sifted whole wheat flour
- 2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups buttermilk
- 2 teaspoons molasses
- 2 beaten egg yolks
- 1/4 cup melted butter
- 2 whipped egg whites
Official Spider-Man Cookbook recipe
- 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 egg
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 4 tablespoons melted butter
So the 1996 Untold Tales recipe has buckwheat flour and molasses in it. That recipe also contains salt and it uses a different technique of whisking the egg whites before folding them in which should give some lift and fluffiness to the finished wheatcakes. The Official Cookbook contains no salt and no sugar at all. At first, I thought this might be a mistake, but the recipe actually turned out just fine without these ingredients. The baking soda contributes a little bit of salt/sodium and the lack of sweetness isn’t really an issue as long as you’re pouring some syrup on top of the wheatcakes.
Both wheatcake recipes call for baking soda but only the 1996 Untold Tales recipe uses baking powder as well. I’m not a professional pancake maker but I do know that baking soda is worthless unless it has additional acid which boosts the leavening agents and causes the pancakes to rise. This acid can and usually does come from the buttermilk. People who know more than me, say that using baking soda and baking powder in a pancake recipe is ok because the two ingredients react at different stages of the pancake cooking process so they both help to provide lift in the final result.
Issues with buckwheat wheatcakes?
My wife (the other part of my current wheatcake test control group) enjoyed the extra nutty flavor that buckwheat flour brought to the table. But I found a couple of problems with it.
In my limited experience as a recipe developer, there are a couple of issues with the buckwheat version of Aunt May’s wheatcakes. The first of which is that buckwheat adds an additional brown color to the pancakes. This isn’t so much of a problem as long as you are prepared for this. The color will appear as if the wheatcakes are overcooked or even burned. Compare the picture here with the photo above to see what I mean. This color issue made it just a bit harder to capture good photos and videos of the darker wheatcakes because I assumed the viewer would think they were overcooked.
The second issue I have with putting buckwheat flour in my Aunt May’s wheatcakes recipe is that buckwheat flour isn’t super easy to find. Sure you can order it on Amazon or drive across town to Whole Foods, but I am much happier sharing a recipe with ingredients that are fairly easy to source (please don’t link to all those recipes I’ve shared with gochujang and gochugaru here).
Because of these issues with buckwheat flour and because I did enjoy some of the flavors in both versions of wheatcakes I decided to marry these two Aunt May wheatcakes recipes into my own recipe that’s easy to make and makes great, flavorful wheatcakes.
Aunt May's wheatcakes
This recipe was inspired by both the wheatcake recipe from the Official Spider-Man Cookbook and Aunt May's wheatcake recipe that was released in Untold Tales of Spider-Man Annual 1996. I tried both and combined the best of each into this one recipe that's easy to make and very tasty.
Get RecipeAunt May’s wheatcakes but smaller
In 2003 some fast-food scientists at McDonald’s invented something called the McGriddle. A McGriddle is a breakfast sandwich that is made using two griddle cakes—or pancakes as we call them here on Earth—as the bread or buns holding everything together. I haven’t written about the McGriddle on this sandwich blog yet and I figured if I was writing about Aunt May’s wheatcakes I might as well steal the McGriddle idea and run with it.
So I turned her wheatcake into circular 3.5-inch griddle cakes.
I used a metal biscuit cutter as the mold for my 3.5-inch wheatcakes but this means that I can only make one small wheatcake at a time. If I were to do this again I would probably invest in some 3.5-inch English/muffin or crumpet molds or even purchase some slightly cheaper but also slightly larger larger 4-inch muffin rings.
Making them one at a time means that each wheatcake takes about 6 minutes from start to stop, which also means that the full batch of wheatcakes will end up taking more than 50 minutes to cook them all. That kind of stinks, so I would buy more standard-sized ring molds if I were to tackle this project again (and I might—ok, I probably will make McGriddles for this blog at some point who am I trying to kid here).
You don’t have to use a ring mold to cook small pancakes and use them as the bread or buns on your next sandwich, it’s just more consistent with the round molds.
Now that we have small wheatcakes what’s next?
Since we’re working on a sandwich for Spider-Man featuring Peter Parker’s Aunt’s wheatcake recipe, I figured we’d have to find a sandwich that is popular in New York City. I first thought about the Bacon, Egg, and Cheese but figured since we were already working on a McGriddle-style sandwich I would instead make a slightly altered breakfast version of the chopped cheese, but instead of ground beef and American cheese, I opted for pork breakfast sausage and sliced cheddar.
Bacon egg cheese wheatcake version
The other most popular New York sandwich is probably the bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich so I decided to make a wheatcake version of those since I had some bacon hanging out in the fridge. This turned out to be a super good version of this sort of sandwich and was very very similar to a McDonald’s McGriddle.
Now that we have the BEC out of the way, it’s time to get serious about our chopped cheese variant.
Maple sausage chopped cheese
In order to turn chopped cheese into a breakfast version, I bought an onion, some ground breakfast sausage, and several slices of cheddar cheese. The process for my maple sausage chopped cheese goes like this:
- dice and saute onion
- add a patty of ground meat—in this case, ground sausage
- break the meat and onions into small pieces
- once the meat is almost fully cooked drizzle on some maple syrup and add slices of cheese
- chop everything together
- the heat from the meat and onions helps to melt the cheese
Chopped cheese is ground meat + onions and melty cheese all chopped together. Swipe through for a slideshow of the chopped cheese process. 
First you start with some diced onions sauteed in a tiny bit of oil. 
Add a patty of ground meat—in this case, it’s pork breakfast sausage. 
Season the meat and chop it into small pieces and toss with the cooking onions. 
Drizzle on a little maple syrup. 
Continue choping the meat into smaller pieces and stirring everything togther. 
Add cheese slices on top of the meat. 
With a sharp spatula, chop the cheese into the warm meat. 
Once the meat is fully cooked and the cheese is all melty, it’s time to sandwich.
Since we have wheatcakes that aren’t going to be topped with maple syrup, I found it helped to have some sweetness ingrained into the meat and cheese. That’s where the maple syrup comes in, but I also added a sweet and spicy sauce that helped as well.
Ketchup-based spicy maple sandwich sauce?
Chopped cheese is often served with ketchup as an optional condiment. I didn’t want to use just straight ketchup but I figured this sandwich could use some sauce, so I tried to come up with a ketchup-based sauce that still had a lot of flavors to complement the onions, meat, and cheese in the rest of the sandwich.
Spicy maple breakfast sandwich sauce
Here are the ingredients I used in this sauce. They’re in the full recipe down below, but I’m posting them here so you can see how simple it is.
- 2 tablespoons ketchup
- 2 tablespoons sriracha
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1 teaspoon maple syrup
Folded egg
I’ve written about the folded egg quite a few times at this point but it’s definitely a technique that I think you should be familiar with if you like breakfast sandwiches. It’s basically a cross between scrambled eggs and an omelet. It takes almost no time at all and the addition of a folded egg adds a whole lot to a sandwich in my experience.
The addition of this egg preparation benefits this sandwich both visually and flavorfully. I ate a version with and without a folded egg, and the one with the egg was a whole bunch better.
Non-stick pan?
The answer: is yes.
You can make the chopped cheese part of this sandwich in a non-stick pan if that’s what you have available. Just don’t use metal utensils or you’ll scratch the pan’s surface. In one of my attempts at making this sandwich, I tried to use just one pan so I made the chopped cheese portion and then wiped it out with a paper towel in order to cook the folded egg as well.
Petey Parker’s breakfast chopped cheese on Aunt May’s wheatcakes
I had a couple of test runs of this sandwich before I settled on the official recipe that I ended up sticking with. The first version did not have an egg or sauce, it was just maple sausage chopped cheese and it was pretty good. But it was also pretty simple and not easy to photograph due to all of the different colors of brown.
Next, I tried it with a folded egg which really made a huge difference and helped the sandwich feel even more like a breakfast meal. The final addition was the sauce which brought everything together.
Scroll through and look at a few photos of the final sandwiches and get the full recipe just a bit further down the page.
Peter Parker's maple chopped cheese on griddled wheatcakes
This Spider-Man inspired McGriddle-style sandwich is packed full of Spectacular, Astonishing, and Amazing flavors. The sandwich is sausage-y and cheesy, with a folded egg and a slightly spicy and sweet sauce layered inside two of Aunt May's famous wheatcakes.
Ingredients:
Aunt May\'s wheatcakes- 3⁄4 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1⁄2 teaspoon salt
- 1 whole large egg
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 2 teaspoons molasses
- 1 tablespoon butter (for the pan or griddle)
- 1 teaspoon olive or vegetable oil
- onion
- 3 to 4 ounces pork sausage
- 1 to 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 1 to 2 slices of cheddar or American cheese
- 1 teaspoon butter
- 1 whole large egg
- salt and pepper
- 2 tablespoons ketchup
- 2 tablespoons sriracha
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1 teaspoon maple syrup
- 2 wheatcakes (from above)
- maple syrup chopped cheese (from above)
- folded egg (from above)
Suggested Equipment
Directions:
Aunt May's wheatcakes: add whole wheat flour, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl. Whisk to combine thoroughly.
In another bowl add a whole egg and beat.
Add buttermilk and molasses to the bowl with the egg and stir your wet ingredients to combine.
Add your wet ingredients into the bowl with your dry ingredients and stir just long enough that you no longer see dry flour. This batter does not need to be smooth a few lumps are ok.
Leave the bowl on the counter while you prep your griddle or large pan. Once the surface is hot—after at least 4 or 5 minutes—if you are using ring molds, spray them with non-stick cooking spray and place them on the pan or griddle. Add half a teaspoon or so of butter inside of each ring mold and then spoon in about 1/4 cup of wheatcake batter on top of the butter when it has melted.
If you are not using metal ring molds just spoon 1/4 cup of batter on top of a bit of melted butter and try to keep the wheatcakes in tight circle shapes about 4 inches across.
Griddle over medium heat. Once you start to see bubbles appearing on the uncooked side of the pancake, you can flip. Using a spatula I sometimes will peek under the pancake just to see the level of browning achieved before flipping. Whole wheat pancakes brown a bit darker than regular pancakes so be aware of that. If you are using ring molds, you can flip the whole pancake and mold all at the same time. There will probably be a little batter splash, but hopefully it won't be too messy.
Cook for another couple of minutes on the second side and remove the ring molds, if using.
Once your pancake is cooked on both sides, remove from the heat to a sheet pan or cookie pan and place in a 200-degree F oven to keep pancakes warm until the rest of the sandwich is finished cooking.
Maple syrup chopped cheese: add a teaspoon of oil to a medium pan or griddle over medium high heat. When the oil is shimmering, add diced onion and cook, stiring for 1 minute. Then add the ground sausage.
Cook the onion and sausage for about 4 to 5 minutes, chopping the sausage with a spatula to try to break it into smaller pieces. When the meat is almost fully cooked (very little pink left) drizzle over some maple syrup and then top everything with the cheese slices.
Chop the cheese into the meat with your spatula and fold everything over until the cheese starts to get melty. Remove the meat, onion, and cheese to a bowl while you prepare the egg.
Folded egg: if you're using the same pan that you cooked the sausage, onion, and cheese in, remove it from the heat and wipe it out really well to remove any cooked bits. Grab the bowl crack an egg into it and whisk until fully scrambled. Add salt and pepper to the egg to season. Add the pan (or a new pan) back to medium-low heat and add a teaspoon of butter.
Once the butter is bubbly and melted, pour your whisked egg on top of the butter. Immediately start letting the egg spread out on the bottom of the pan so that it all starts to cook. While it is cooking, you can help it out by keeping the egg in a round or square-ish shape and tilting the pan to allow the runny egg on top to roll off and touch the pan itself. Try to keep the shape somewhat consistent. This will help with folding.
Once most of the egg is set (after 1 to 2 minutes) you can start to fold. Using a spatula, attempt to scoop up one side and fold it over the other. This isn't always easy to do, and it doesn't really matter if you mess it up. But you effectively want to fold everything over itself once or twice until the egg is folded into a size that is consistent with your sandwich.
Once the egg is folded, remove it from the pan and put it on a plate while you prep the rest of the sandwich.
Sweet and spicy breakfast sauce: add the ketchup, sriracha, Dijon mustard, and maple syrup to a small bowl and whisk to combine. Taste the sauce to see if you think it might need more sweetness. Add more maple syrup if you think it does.
Sandwich assembly: place down one wheatcake and then top that with the onion, sausage, and chopped cheese.
Add a bit of sauce on top of the meat then top the sauce with the folded egg. Close the sandwich with the second wheatcake. Serve and enjoy.
Check back next week
Not sure what the next sandwich will be because I am a little behind due to enjoying too many cookies over the holidays but I promise I will come up with some sandwich to create before now and then. Check back next week to see what I come up with!
