I grew up in a semi-homemade household. For example, we amped up canned tomato sauce with fresh veggies and aromatics, stirred pudding mix into boxed cake mix before baking for a richer cake, and added chocolate chips to boxed pancake mix for a special treat. My dad was the cook in our family, but weekends were my mom’s time to tie on an apron, and she loved making pancakes and waffles for breakfast. Even though she quickly whipped them up from the box, it still felt special.
Today, as much as I enjoy preparing a from-scratch batch of pancakes (it’s not that hard), I still have a soft spot for the convenience offered by boxed mixes. Sometimes adding little more than water to an otherwise ready-to-go dry ingredient blend is the ease I need to get some fluffy pancakes on the table. And yet I and many of you are tinkerers at heart—can I add just one more ingredient to make this boxed mix even more special, or at least…different?
It’s a fair question, and one many publications have tried to answer, though in many cases they offer their suggestions without having actually tried the modifications first. I wanted to do one better by making literally dozens of different types of pancakes, all from a boxed mix but with alterations, to see which were worth the trouble and which weren’t.
With the help of my dad’s trusty electric griddle, I now offer a list of boxed pancake mix upgrades and modifications that are tried and tested—they worked for me and I’m confident they’ll work for you too.
Serious Eats / Kelli Solomon
How I Tested
I chose to run this test using Bisquick, a widely available mass-market brand, which calls for a cup of milk and two whole eggs per two cups of pancake mix (which I weighed as 246g).
Before cooking a single pancake,I learned quite a bit by reading our prior boxed cake mix testing, which shares many similarities with pancakes. Some of the results from those tests, like adding coffee, mayonnaise, and jam, were bad enough that I didn’t bother testing those tricks this time.
For these pancake tests, I first made a control group of pancakes by following the instructions on the box. Keep in mind that the Bisquick box’s recipe used 2 cups of pancake mix to produce about 14 pancakes that were about five inches across each, and all my tests were scaled to that batch size.
Then I tried a series of changes to the base recipe, comparing the results to see how those alterations changed the pancakes in taste, fluffiness, and texture, noting whether I thought each addition produced a positive, neutral, or negative change. The results are therefore grouped below based on whether they are recommended, neutral, or not recommended.
Serious Eats / Kelli Solomon
Recommended: Go for It, the Below Make Great Pancakes!
Oat Milk
While I did not test every alternative milk out there (there are just too many these days), I can confirm that oat milk is a worthy substitution for dairy milk. These pancakes tasted slightly sweeter and browned a little faster but were otherwise not distinguishable from the standard cow’s milk pancakes. I assume other non-dairy milk would have a similar result as long as it’s unsweetened.
Buttermilk
The buttermilk I got from my local grocery was very thick, about the consistency of conventional yogurt. This made the batter less spreadable and closer to a cake batter but with a fermented dairy smell; most buttermilk is thinner than the product I bought. Because the buttermilk thickened the batter, and because buttermilk is acidic (creating a stronger reaction with the alkaline leaveners in the pancake mix), the pancakes cooked up much thicker, continuing to grow taller as they cooked. The result was a super fluffy pancake twice as thick as the control batch with a slightly tart note from the buttermilk. I liked these pancakes quite a bit, though if you wanted slightly less tall ones, you could thin the batter by eye with additional buttermilk or regular milk.
Sour Cream & Greek Yogurt
Since sour cream and Greek yogurt are both dense, a one-to-one substitution for whole milk would be too thick. I replaced half of the whole milk with sour cream or yogurt. Both batters had a consistency similar to the buttermilk, which was very thick; as above, one could change the ratio of fermented dairy to the milk or add more milk to thin the batter, if desired. As with the buttermilk, the sour cream and yogurt boosted the leaveners in the pancake mix and made super thick and slightly tangy pancakes. The sour cream pancakes were maybe slightly more acidic than the yogurt pancakes, but both were pretty subtle and very delicious. I think I still prefer the buttermilk pancakes, but I’m more likely to have Greek yogurt in my fridge, so I will definitely make yogurt pancakes again.
Freeze-Dried Fruit
Inspired by Stella Parks’ double strawberry cake, I took some freeze-dried blueberries and pulverized them in the food processor, then measured 1 ounce (28g) for a batch of pancake batter. The blueberry powder made the batter a lovely lavender color with little dark flecks of ground blueberry. If you’re a real fruit lover, you may want to add more, but I would say no more than 1.5 ounces per batch (when I used 2 ounces the pancakes browned too quickly). The color faded as it cooked, but the pancake had a pleasant fruity flavor reminiscent of a blueberry muffin.
Dutch Process Cocoa
I used Dutch process cocoa due to its neutral pH (the acidity of standard cocoa powder might react with the leavener in the pancake mix, so I decided not to introduce that variable). I used 1 ounce (28g) of the cocoa per batch of pancakes. It made a very chocolatey-looking batter, and a much darker and evenly browned pancake. The smell was delicious, reminding me of a rich chocolate cake baking in the oven. I liked the taste initially, but was then put off by a slightly bitter aftertaste. I repeated the test but added an extra teaspoon of sugar to balance the cocoa’s bitterness and loved the results.
Malted Milk Powder
Another idea comes courtesy of Stella Parks, who called malted milk powder the “umami bomb for desserts.” I really loved this addition. I started with one ounce of malted milk powder, but found upping it to two was even better. It made a thicker batter that smelled sweet and earthy. The pancake had a toasted, creamy flavor and tasted just as good as any restaurant pancakes I’ve ever had. (Malted milk powder is also a key ingredient in Genevieve Yam’s easy hot chocolate, by the way.)
Citrus Zests
No need to limit yourself to lemon or orange zest; I had a clementine and a pomelo in my fridge, and each added an interesting floral flair to their respective pancake batters. However, be mindful of how much you add; a lightly packed teaspoon of zest from a lemon or orange should do the trick; add too much and the pancakes will grow bitter. If you choose a fruit known to be especially bitter, like grapefruit or pomelo, aim for less.
Spices & Extracts
It goes without saying that your go-to baking spices like cinnamon and nutmeg are great additions to a pancake batter, but there’s no harm in reaching for a pre-mixed blend or thinking beyond the basics. Cardamom or ginger make great flavorings, and some spices pair particularly well with fruit—coriander and blueberries enhance each other’s natural flavors, and a few drops of rose water are a lovely match for strawberries.
Versatile extracts like vanilla or almond add a welcome flavor to pancakes but less common extracts can also be great (hazelnut and apricot extract were both tasty in my tests). Just be mindful of how much you use; start with 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon per batch before adding more.
Other Mix-Ins: Fruit, Nuts & Chocolate
The sky’s the limit when it comes to mix-ins, but the key is ensuring that the pieces are small enough to be evenly dispersed throughout each pancake. Anything larger than a blueberry or a chocolate chip should be chopped or cut into small pieces.
Chewy dried fruit should be softened in a warm liquid, like juice, rum, or even just water, and then drained before being mixed in (I prefer to sprinkle mix-ins on each pancake once it’s been ladled onto the griddle to control the exact quantity, but stirring them into the batter right before cooking will also work). Up to one cup total of fruit, nuts, or chocolate or a combination of any of the three per batch worked in my tests.
Neutral: Fine, but Not Really Worth the Effort
Chocolate Milk
The batter looked chocolatey and thick, with roughly the same brown color as the chocolate milk itself. As the pancake cooked, it emitted a chocolatey aroma, but did it taste chocolatey? Not really. It was sweeter, for sure, and a bit thicker, but the chocolate was faint. While this does create a tasty pancake, it’s not worth wasting chocolate milk on it; if you want chocolatey pancakes, go with the Dutch process cocoa powder recommended above and/or stir in chocolate in chip or chopped form.
Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
There was no visible difference between this pancake and the control made with vegetable oil. I could just barely taste the grassy flavor of my olive oil, but it wasn’t super noticeable. More importantly, though, it’s not an improvement, so I would only use olive oil if you don’t have vegetable oil on hand.
Butter
The difference between this pancake and those made with vegetable oil was subtle, but perhaps there was a slightly more detectable sweetness. Is it worth taking the extra step of melting butter? Not really. Browned butter, however, adds a more robust, nutty flavor that is a bonus. Am I likely to brown butter just for this, though? No.
Also, keep in mind that you can cook the pancakes themselves in butter and serve them with pats of butter on top, so there’s no shortage of opportunity to add buttery flavor. Of all of them, melting butter into the batter is arguably the least impactful.
Adding an Extra Egg
When I added an additional egg to the batter, the result was a slightly darker, denser batter. The pancake browned faster, had a creamier texture, and tasted a bit eggy. That didn’t offend me, but it’s not necessarily what I’m looking for in a pancake, and surely not worth the egg unless you’re desperately trying to get rid of yours.
Whipping the Egg Whites
For this batch, I separated the egg yolks from the egg whites, whipped the egg whites to stiff peaks, then folded the yolks and whipped whites into the batter separately. My hope was that this would result in something like a soufflé pancake but that didn’t quite happen. While it made for a lighter, fluffier pancake, it was hardly lofty. This pancake was only slightly thicker and almost indistinguishable from the control. I don’t think it’s worth the additional effort for the minimal payoff, especially given the fact that you’re probably reaching for the boxed mix to not have to do much work in the first place.
Baking Powder
To see what would happen if I supplemented the leaveners in the boxed mix, I added 1 teaspoon of baking powder per pancake batch. Once poured onto the griddle, the batter was a bit more bubbly, and the pancakes domed as they rose. The overall result was a slightly fluffier pancake that browned evenly; the baking powder did not have a noticeable impact on flavor.
I’d say you’re free to enhance your mix’s rising ability with a dose of baking powder, just be careful you don’t add too much or it’ll start to ruin the flavor.
Negative: Do Not Try This At Home
Water/Seltzer
Why did I test water when there was a very low probability it would be an improvement over pancakes made with milk? Mostly necessity. What if you don’t have milk—can water work in a pinch? At least with Bisquick pancake mix, not really. The pancake didn’t brown well (milk contains sugars and proteins that brown during cooking, water doesn’t). I also found the pancake texture less fluffy, and the flavor was lacking.
Seltzer was just as problematic, though its carbonation aerated the pancakes more, leading to a fluffier, if still insipid, result.
Baking Soda
Did this make for a fluffier pancake? Absolutely. But baking soda makes the pancakes unpleasantly salty and soapy in flavor. One extra teaspoon of baking soda per batch was too much, and even half a teaspoon of baking soda left a chemical aftertaste. By the time you reduce the baking soda to a level where you won’t taste it, it won’t make much of a difference anyway. Stick with baking powder from above if you want more leavened pancakes and avoid plain baking soda.
