Instant pancake batter is a great pre-prepared food to have for a lazy Sunday morning. You don’t have to run around your kitchen searching for a bunch of ingredients before the rest of your household wakes up.
You can even make pancakes the night before and have it ready to go in the morning. But how long will wet pancake batter last in the fridge?
Wet pancake batter will last up to 3 days in the fridge. The flavor of the batter will not be as potent if you wait a few days to cook the batter, but the pancakes will be fluffy and cook evenly. If you use old eggs or milk that is about to turn, your wet batter may not taste good after a few days.
If you have a busy day ahead of you, then mixing pre-packaged pancake batter and storing it in the fridge for tomorrow is a simple and easy idea.
Remove the pre-mixed batter from the fridge and let it sit on the counter for 10 minutes cooking pancakes.
By letting it sit out on the counter, the mix will reach room temperature, which will make it easy to spread on the frying pan.
How Long Does Pancake Batter Last?
The smell of freshly cooked pancakes on a lazy morning will trigger happy childhood memories for millions of people.
Pancakes are delicious, simple, and are perfect for any type of topping that you want to place on top of the pancake stack!
Most people use instant pancake mix that only requires water. Some pancake mixes are a bit more advanced and require milk and eggs. Milk, eggs and water are the most common wet ingredients.
To cook pancakes, all you have to do is mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients, place some butter on a hot frying pan, swirl the butter around so it coats the pan evenly, and scoop spoonfuls of batter onto the pan.
Cook the batter for a few minutes, flip it over and cook the other side. In two or three minutes, the pancake will be ready!
It is also perfectly fine to make a pancake batter with wet ingredients in a bowl and then pop it into the fridge to save for later.
But once you mix the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients, how long will the pancake batter last? Can the same bowl of wet pancake batter last for another day or so?
Dry Pancake Mix
Dry pancake mix belongs in every home. Depending on the pancake mix, it will either only need water or milk. Sometimes you’ll need eggs too.
If you’re buying dry pancake mix with the intention of making some for later, then purchase pancake mix that only requires water. Dry pancake mix has a very long shelf life.
As long as nothing penetrates the dry pancake mix bag, the mix will last up to a year.
Many people have tried cooking up a batch of pancakes made with three- and four-year-old pancake mix and it sometimes works out.
The pancakes will not rise as high as they would if it was a freshly packaged pack of pancake mix, but it will still have a wonderful taste.
If you find some dry pancake mix in the back of your cupboard and you can’t find the expiration date, cook a batch of pancakes as instructed and test them out yourself.
If the final product looks weird, tastes weird, or smells weird, don’t eat it.
Homemade Dry Pancake Mix
If you have all the ingredients yourself, you can make a dry pancake mix and store it in your fridge.
To make a basic dry pancake mix, all you need is flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, and seasonings like cinnamon and salt. Do not add vanilla, because vanilla is a wet ingredient.
Store the dry mix in your fridge. Do not add eggs or milk to the homemade pancake mix or you’ll have to cook it within three to four days. Keep the eggs and milk separate.
If you’re feeling adventurous and you’ve done it before, you can add powdered milk to your pancake mix. When you add powdered milk to your pancake mix, then the only wet ingredient you will need is water.
You can add an egg to the water for a better flavor. Eggs have fat in them, so your pancakes will taste better. But if you do not have eggs on hand, then water will be just fine.
Homemade dry pancake mix will last about 3 months in the fridge. The difference between homemade dried pancake mix and pre-pack of striped pancake mix is that homemade pancake mix does not have preservatives in the mix.
Preservatives are the ingredients that allow pre packaged pancake mix to last for one or two years.
Note: if your homemade dry pancake mix is becoming clumpy in the fridge, do not throw it away. The flour, baking soda, and other ingredients naturally stick together. If the homemade dry pancake mix is in a bag, then use your thumb and forefinger to press on the clumps and separate them. If the homemade mix is in a jar, take a dry fork and stir the mix for a few seconds.
Wet Pancake Mix
No matter what type of pancake mix you use, prepackaged or homemade, once you combine the pancake mix with wet ingredients, such as eggs, butter, heavy cream, half and half, a milk alternative, etc, you have only a few days to cook the wet batter.
Wet pancake mix will only last about 3 days in the fridge. We recommend storing the wet pancake mix in the fridge in an airtight container.
Do not store wet pancake batter in the cupboard. Once the batter is mixed with wet ingredients, like milk, eggs, butter, or even just water, it must sit in the fridge.
If you store the wet batter in the cupboard, it will rot and grow mold. This will happen even if you store the batter in an airtight container.
Can You Freeze Pancake Mix?
You can freeze dry pancake mix, but it won’t do much to prolong its lifespan. Storing it in the fridge and storing it in the freezer are practically the same.
So if you don’t have any room in your refrigerator, store it in your freezer.
The expiration times for storing pancake mix in a freezer are 3 months for homemade pancake batter and one year for prepackaged pancake batter.
However, we are warning you now that you should never store pancake batter in the freezer. Not only will it be impossible to cook pancakes with frozen pancake batter, you cannot spoon out the pancake batter onto the frying pan.
We once thought that pancake matter could be frozen if it was scooped into a large ice cube tray with large cute holes. But that would make quite a mess.
And you will have to wait for the pancake mix to unfreeze before cooking it anyway, so it makes little sense to scoop them into an ice cube tray.
Warning About Old Ingredients
Pancake batter may last 3 to 4 days in the refrigerator. But this time frame assumes that the milk and eggs in the wet pancake batter are fresh and not near their expiration dates.
The average expiration date for eggs is 3 weeks after they have been packed. All milk has an expiration date printed somewhere on its carton or plastic container.
If milk is close to its expiration date, then cook the pancake butter before the milk’s expiration date passes.
For example, if the milk’s expiration date is June 28th and you’re mixing the pancake batter on June 26th, the last day to cook the pancake batter would still be June 28th.
Conclusion to How Long Pancake Batter Lasts
Pancake mix and pancake batter can be stored in the refrigerator. If you combine dry mix with wet ingredients to make the batter, then cook the pancakes within 3 days or 72 hours.
If milk and eggs expire within 3 days, then cook the batter before the last day. You can also make homemade dry pancake mix and store it in the fridge.
Homemade pancake mix lasts for up to 3 months. It makes no difference when to store dry pancake mix in the fridge or freezer. But do not store wet pancakes better in the freezer
