Household Ingredients Compared  ›  Pancake & Waffle Mix (Singapore)

Pancake & waffle mix: what's actually in it?

Every box on this shelf is mostly the same thing — enriched bleached wheat flour, sugar, and leavening (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate). What changes between boxes is what else is in the dry mix: whether milk and egg are already in the powder, whether oil is in the powder, and whether it is a "complete" mix (just add water) or a standard mix (you add egg, milk and oil yourself). The name on the front rarely says which; the ingredient list does.

This page covers dry pancake and waffle mixes sold in Singapore — the same mixes are generally labelled for both pancakes and waffles. It does not cover ready-made batter, frozen pancakes, or pancake syrup (syrups are on the maple-syrup page). This page does not give a health score or a "best" pick.

The headline, in 30 seconds

• All ten panelled mixes start with enriched bleached wheat flour. The flour is "enriched" with niacin, iron, thiamin, riboflavin and folic acid — those are nutrients added back after milling, not extra ingredients you chose.
• "Complete" means the milk, fat and egg are already in the powder. Pearl Milling Original Complete adds dextrose, nonfat dry milk, palm oil, wheat gluten, corn syrup solids and sodium caseinate to the plain mix. Betty Crocker Complete Buttermilk adds degermed yellow corn meal, defatted soy flour, palm oil, dextrose, buttermilk and DATEM.
• The plain mixes are the shortest lists. Pearl Milling Original (not complete) is five items: enriched bleached flour, sugar, leavening, salt, calcium carbonate. Betty Crocker Bisquick Original is longer — it already contains vegetable oil, corn starch and dextrose in the powder, so it is a baking mix as well as a pancake mix.
• Buttermilk is usually a powder, not liquid. Where "buttermilk" appears in a dry mix it is dried buttermilk in the powder; you still add liquid when you make the batter.
• The Japanese hotcake mixes are the big gap on this page. Morinaga and Showa are the mixes Singapore shoppers actually buy most (Don Don Donki, Shopee SG), but no verbatim pack ingredient list for either was retrievable online in this pass — only the "add 1 egg + 100 ml milk" directions and allergen notes (wheat, soy). They are in seen-but-not-verified until a pack photo closes them. Do not assume they match the US mixes above.
• Every panelled list below is a US-market list, flagged as such. No FairPrice, Cold Storage, Giant or Sheng Siong ingredient section for any pancake mix was retrievable in this pass, and no SG pack transcription was found for the US brands. The lists are the manufacturers' own formulations for these named products, but the SG-imported pack still needs a photo check before it is treated as the SG list.

At a glance

Panelled with verbatim lists: 11 products. All 11 lists are US-market lists (US retailer ingredient sections, Open Food Facts US entries, or USDA-sourced listings), flagged per card — no SG pack list was verified for any of them in this pass. Seen-but-not-verified: see the list below, headed by Morinaga and Showa hotcake mixes.

Prices are deliberately not shown here: they change weekly and would go stale. This site compares ingredients only.

Standard mixes — you add egg, milk and oil

Complete mixes — just add water

Single-serve — shake 'n pour

Seen but not verified — do not panel until checked

• Morinaga Hotcake Mix (4 × 150 g) — the best-known hotcake mix in Singapore (Don Don Donki, Shopee SG, Japanese grocers). Directions are widely quoted (1 packet + 1 egg + 100 ml milk), and sellers state "Contains wheat, soy" — but no verbatim pack ingredient list was retrievable online in this pass (brand site, retailers, Open Food Facts and reseller listings all lack it). Needs a pack photo. Do not borrow the US mixes' lists for it.
• Showa Hotcake Mix (120 g packets) — the other Japanese hotcake mix, same directions pattern (1 packet + 1 egg + 80 ml milk). Same gap as Morinaga: no verbatim pack list retrievable online. Needs a pack photo.
• Wakodo Baby-Friendly Hot Cake Mix (pumpkin & sweet potato) — a Japanese import sold through Japan-export retailers; a retailer list exists (wheat flour, maltose, vegetable oil, dextrin, sugar, starch, pumpkin powder, corn syrup, egg white/yolk powder, skimmed milk powder, sweet potato powder, leavening agent, calcium carbonate, sodium caseinate, emulsifier, iron pyrophosphate) but it is a baby-food product from a non-SG retailer, so it is not panelled as a general pancake mix. Needs an SG pack check if it is sold here.
• Hungry Jack Complete Pancake Mix & Waffle Mix — Buttermilk — listed by overseas import grocers; no verbatim list retrieved in this pass.
• Freee (Doves Farm) Pancake Mix, gluten & egg free — listed by overseas import grocers; no verbatim list retrieved in this pass.
• Bob's Red Mill, Kodiak Cakes, Dr Oetker, McKenzie's and other US/UK/AU mixes — no SG sale with a verified list found in this pass; do not assume they are on SG shelves.
• FairPrice / Giant / Sheng Siong / Cold Storage house-brand and Bake King pancake mixes, Donki own-label mixes — no ingredient section retrieved for any house-brand mix in this pass; the supermarket category pages could not be read for ingredient sections via search. Needs in-store pack photos.
• Ready-made batter, frozen pancakes/waffles, and savoury Korean pancake (buchimgae) mixes — out of scope for this page (different products); a Korean pancake mix belongs on its own page if it is ever covered.

Nutrition — what the numbers say

All figures in the table are as sold (dry mix), per 100 g, from the source stated. Pancake-mix nutrition is for the dry powder, not the cooked pancake — the cooked pancake also contains the egg, milk and oil you add, so these figures are not the nutrition of a finished pancake. Sugars here are total sugars as printed; the ingredient panels show which of them are added (sugar, dextrose, corn syrup solids, molasses). No official Singapore Nutri-Grade (A–D) was found printed on any of these mixes in this pass, so none is quoted here; no grade has been assigned.

Salt and sodium: salt = sodium × 2.5. The table shows sodium as printed (in mg) with the salt equivalent in brackets. Sodium is not presented as salt, and salt is not presented as sodium.

Open Food Facts is a community database and is flagged as secondary where used: the pack and the retailer nutrition section take precedence if they disagree. Figures marked "not stated" were not in the source retrieved; they are not estimated, borrowed from another variant, or copied across flavours.

Observed numbers, no verdict: the one verified per-100 g row, Krusteaz Complete, lists 10.53 g sugars and 842 mg sodium per 100 g of dry mix. That sodium figure is the dry powder's, before any salted butter or topping.

Seen but not verified (nutrition): no per-100 g nutrition panel was verified in this pass for Betty Crocker Bisquick Original, Bisquick Shake 'n Pour Buttermilk, Betty Crocker Complete Buttermilk, Betty Crocker Complete Original, Krusteaz Buttermilk Complete (family size), Krusteaz Sweet Cream Complete, Pearl Milling Original, Pearl Milling Original Complete, Pearl Milling Whole Wheat Blend, Maple Grove Farms Buttermilk & Honey, Morinaga Hotcake Mix, Showa Hotcake Mix, or any house-brand mix. Their ingredient panels are unchanged; their nutrition figures are not estimated here, and the Krusteaz Complete row above is not copied onto the other Krusteaz variants.

How to read a pancake mix label — the jargon, in plain English

Complete mix

Just add water. The milk, fat and (sometimes) egg are already dried into the powder — look for nonfat dry milk, palm oil, sodium caseinate or buttermilk in the list.

Standard / original mix

You add egg, milk and oil yourself. The powder is mostly flour, sugar and leavening, so the list is shorter — but the finished pancake still contains all of those things.

Enriched bleached flour

Wheat flour that was bleached white and then had niacin, iron, thiamin, riboflavin and folic acid added back. "Enriched" describes the flour; it is not a separate ingredient you add.

Leavening (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate)

The raising agents that make the gas that lifts the pancake. Baking soda needs an acid to work; the phosphates supply it. Different mixes use different phosphate combinations — that is a formulation difference, not a quality ranking.

DATEM / mono- and diglycerides

Emulsifiers that keep the batter smooth and the crumb soft. They appear in complete mixes and baking mixes, not in the shortest plain mixes.

Dextrose / corn syrup solids

Sweeteners made from corn starch. Dextrose is a sugar; corn syrup solids are dried corn syrup. Both count as added sugar even though neither is called "sugar" on its own.

Hotcake mix

The Japanese name for the same product — a thicker, sweeter pancake mix sold in single-serve sachets. "Hotcake" is not a different food, but the Japanese formulations (Morinaga, Showa) are different products from the US mixes and need their own pack lists.

What this page is not

• Not a health score, and not a "best" pick. Complete and standard mixes are different products, and this page does not rank them.
• Not a taste test, and not a price comparison. Prices change weekly; ingredients change less often, but still change.
• Not complete. The Japanese hotcake mixes that dominate the Singapore shelf are not yet panelled, for the verification reasons given, not hidden. No SG pack list was verified for any panelled product — every panelled list is a flagged US-market list.

Sources and method

Checked 5–6 November 2026 from: US retailer ingredient sections (ShopRite for Bisquick Original, Bisquick Shake 'n Pour, Krusteaz Buttermilk Complete family size and Krusteaz Sweet Cream Complete; Publix for Pearl Milling Original; Hannaford/Shaw's for Pearl Milling Original Complete; Uber Eats retailer listing for Pearl Milling Whole Wheat Blend; The Fresh Grocer for Maple Grove Farms Buttermilk & Honey); USDA-sourced listings via Prospre (Betty Crocker Complete Buttermilk, Betty Crocker Complete Original); Open Food Facts US entries (Krusteaz Complete Pancake Mix, with its per-100 g nutrition); Lemon8 Singapore posts for Morinaga's Shopee SG sale (no list retrieved); Niji Spiral translation review for Morinaga/Showa directions (no verbatim pack list); Japacle retailer listing for the Wakodo baby hotcake mix (not panelled). Limitation, stated plainly: FairPrice, Cold Storage, Giant, Sheng Siong, Don Don Donki, Mustafa, Meidi-Ya, Le Petit Depot, RedMart, Lazada SG and Shopee SG category/search pages returned no ingredient sections for pancake mix through web search in this pass, so no SG retailer ingredient section is quoted on this page and no SG pack was transcribed. Full per-fact source list is in the accompanying research notes. Nutrition section added 5–6 November 2026: figures are standardised to per 100 g where the source gives per-100 figures; per-serving-only figures are labelled as such and are not converted; sugars are total sugars as printed, not added sugars, unless the source states added sugars; salt = sodium × 2.5. Where a full pack list could not be verified, the product is in seen-but-not-verified instead of being panelled.