On 12th February, households around the country will get together to make, flip and eat stacks of pancakes!

Pancake Day is a great excuse to get together in the kitchen and have fun experimenting with toppings, trying (and more than often failing) at flipping pancakes and using up the flour, milk and eggs in your cupboards.

But after some scouring the shelves at the supermarkets, I felt a little deflated to find that it is now significantly more popular to use a pancake mix than to make them from scratch.

Is it more economical to use ready made pancake mix?

To buy a 1kg bag of flour, 6 medium eggs and 4 pints of milk will cost you around £2.50. Pancake mix varies depending on brand but on average will cost you 50p a pack.  There are stacks of offers in the supermarkets in the run up to pancake day so you can make around 12 pancakes for £1 using the ready made mix.

With these figures in mind, pancake mix is cheaper. But surely most households will have a bag of flour lurking at the back of their cupboard, milk in the fridge and eggs on the worktop?

A fading tradition?

Pancake Day’s sentiment is frugality, it’s about using up the rich food in your house to make way for the fasting to come during Lent. It seems as though we are all rushing out to buy our batter ingredients despite the pancake day tradition of using up what you’ve got in storage.

If the supermarket displays are anything to go by, gone are the days of making your own batter using 3 simple ingredients.

The age of  ‘Just add water’ is upon us.