With so many protein pancakes out there, how do you know which one to choose? I decided to do a side by side comparison so I could discover, THROUGH SCIENCE, which was the best option. I decided to try 4 popular brands: Kodiak Cakes, Pamcakes’ Pancakes, Panic Pancakes, and Flapjacked. I cooked these pancakes in a pan, on medium, and according to the instructions on the box. Your pancakes might not look like mine, but I did my best to be an impartial pancake cooking robot. I graded these pancakes on the following criteria: Taste, Price, Macros, and Ingredients.
Helpful tips: To find out if the pan is ready for your pancake mix, splash a little bit of water onto the pan. It should boil immediately. I also cooked with Smart Balance butter. You can use any oil, just keep in mind the smoke point.
I used to hate Kodiak Cakes. I’m not sure if they reformulated the recipe or if I just got better at cooking, but these turned out quite well. In the past I would always burn them. The image here is SLIGHTLY misleading, because… the instructions are misleading! The instructions ask for a cup of mix, but the serving size is a half cup! So a full serving size is about half of the portion pictured here. The box also gives instructions for waffles which is cool, as well as instructions on how to sub water for milk. I used water for all the recipes and will reflect the macros accordingly. The batter is pretty runny and creates a thin, dense pancake.
Taste: Tastes like pancakes. I really thought the flavor would vary a lot between pancakes, but if I did a blind taste test between all of them I probably wouldn’t know the difference.
Price: $5.50 for 20oz/ .28 cents per oz. according to their website. You can get this brand at almost any supermarket so no need to worry about shipping.
Macros: Serving size is 1/2 cup, half what is pictured here. (See above.) For 1/2 cup you get 190cal, 2f/30c/14p. You also get 5g of fiber and 3 grams of sugar.
For comparison purposes, at 1 cup you get 380cal, 4f/60c/28p. Kodiak Cakes has the lowest calories, lowest fats, highest carbs, and lowest protein out of the brands surveyed.
Ingredients: 100% whole grain flour and oats. The sugar comes from brown sugar. The protein comes from wheat protein, whey protein concentrate, and milk protein concentrate. Pretty good stuff here!
Pamcakes’ Pancakes (Classic Buttermilk)
This mix was a little difficult to blend, there were little bits that didn’t quite want to mix together. With some extra time though I was able to get it pretty uniform. This mix was probably the runniest out of the bunch, I actually had to make a second batch because the first ones were really ugly looking. I wouldn’t mess with the water ratio though because these also turned out pretty dense and almost a little chewy. I didn’t really consider this a bad thing, if I was dieting I’d prefer something that made me slow down a little bit.
Taste: These have a mild, lingering, sweet taste.
Price: $15.99 for 11.76 oz/ $1.35 per oz. Can only order online so you’d have to consider shipping as well. Pamcakes’ has plenty of ambassadors so you can easily get a 10% off code by browsing their Instagram feed (@pamcakespancakes). They are the most expensive pancake surveyed here.
Macros: Serving size is 1/3 cup, and for that you get 130cal, 4.5f/10c/12p. You also get 2g of fiber and 3g of sugar, but there aren’t any added sugars.
For comparison purposes, at 1 cup you get 390cal, 13.5f/30c/36p. Pamcakes has the second lowest calories, highest fats, lowest carbs, and second lowest protein out of the brands surveyed.
Ingredients: Again, no added sugars here. Ingredients list here is a little shorter than most. Protein comes from whey isolate and egg whites. The flour is gluten free oat flour.
Panic Pancakes (Buttermilk Blaze)
Panic Pancakes suggests using a griddle, but I still used a pan because I don’t have a griddle.
I think these were the most informative instructions, they suggested letting the batter sit (always a good idea), how to make thinner pancakes, waffles, and instructions on how to add in their Angry Mills Peanut Powder. These pancakes turned out pretty thin and dense so I don’t think they need to be any thinner. Maybe you could make protein crêpes?
After eating these pancakes, I didn’t look any more like Flex Lewis. Maybe I need to try the whole Sinister Labs line?
Taste: The pancake batter had a very distinct sweet smell. I can’t figure out if the pancakes were sweeter too, or if I just thought they were sweeter because of the smell.
Price: $12.00 for 11.5 oz/ $1.04 per oz according to their website. You can find the Sinister Labs brand in most smaller supplement stores, but if you don’t have one nearby you’d have to pay for shipping.
Macros: Serving size is 1/2 cup, and for that you get 200cal, 5f/19c/20p. You also get 4g of fiber and 8g of sugar, but there aren’t any added sugars.
For comparison purposes, at 1 cup you get 400cal, 10f/38c/40p. Panic Pancakes has the highest calories (tied with FlapJacked), second highest fats, second lowest carbs, and highest protein (tied with FlapJacked) out of the brands surveyed.
Ingredients: Ingredients list is a little long. Protein comes from Instantized Whey Protein. Whole grain oat flour. Also surprisingly contains Medium Chain Triglyceride Powder.
Prior to this experiment I always used FlapJacked. But I never followed the instructions and instead just added water until I got my desired consistency. Only using 1/3 cup of water yields very THICC pancakes. There’s instructions suggesting adding 1-2 tablespoons of water for thinner pancakes, but this time I decided to try a whole cup of water instead of 1/3. As you can see you get way more pancakes. 
I always prefer to fool myself with the illusion of more food. If you still wanted them a little fluffier you could do 2/3 cup of water or whatever you see fit. The package also gives instructions on how to make chocolate chip cookies and waffles. As a side note the zipper on the package blows, I can never get it to reseal properly.
Taste: Nothing special to note. Tastes like pancakes.
Price: $12.99 (currently on sale for $9.99 but I’ll use the full price) for 24 oz./ .54 cents per oz. according to their website. Vitamin Shoppe stocks this brand so I can’t imagine ever really needing to order it online.
Macros: Serving size is 1/2 cup, and for that you get 200cal, 3.5f/23c/20p. You also get 5g of fiber and 6g of sugar.
For comparison purposes, at 1 cup you get 400cal, 7f/46c/40p. FlapJacked has the highest calories (tied with Panic Pancakes), second lowest fats, second highest carbs, and highest protein (tied with Panic Pancakes) out of the brands surveyed.
Ingredients: Protein comes from Whey Protein Isolate, Pea Protein. Organic Coconut Flour flour. Sweetened with Stevia Extract.
What protein pancake brand works best for you really depends on your own goals and your own wallet. Kodiak Cakes has the lowest calories and the cheapest price, but I think you can get more pancakes out of the FlapJacked mix since they are thicker. The protein content of FlapJacked tips the scales a little in their favor for me, personally. If you were cutting carbs you might want to opt for Pamcakes’ or Panic Pancakes.
There are so many factors to why we buy products! The product lines may influence you, like whether or not a brand has a specific flavor or if they sell another item you like. Perhaps Sinister Labs’ zero calorie pancake syrup that you can order bundled with their chocolate pancake mix? You may be dying for Pamcakes’ Red Velvet pancakes. You may want to earn more rewards from Vitamin Shoppe by grabbing your FlapJacked pancakes there!
This experiment has really turned me around on Kodiak Cakes! In the meantime though… I poured all of the mixes into one container to save space! Pure chaos! 
While I only ate one pancake from each brand and gave the rest to my friends, I ended up making the above pancake monstrosity with Pamcakes’ Classic Buttermilk, natural peanut butter, Reese’s chips and the aforementioned Panic Pancakes zero calorie syrup. I had guessed incorrectly at the time that the Pancakes macros would be superior. Just goes to show how much marketing and serving size can influence your perspective!
Thanks for reading and PLEASE comment below if any of my information is incorrect! I did double check my math but mistakes do happen.
Olive Strength Eats 