Breakfast Foods

WARNING: If the date on your pancake mix, waffle mix (or  cake, cookie, or brownie mix) has long passed, seriously consider throwing it out. Also, if the product tastes “funny,” discard it. In either case,  it may be contaminated.

Mold can form in old mix, and it can cause a life-threatening allergic reaction such as  anaphylactic shock (affecting the heart or lungs).   Some mold spores also produce poison (called mycotoxins)  Mold spores can be transported by air, water or insects.  Therefore, after opening a mix, wrap it tightly and keep it dry.  

For more information on this topic, check out these sites:

Hoax Slayer   “Molds in Pancake Mix Warning”

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/mold-pancake.html

Snopes.com  “Flapjack Flap”

http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/pancake.asp

USDA Fact Sheets  “Mold on Food: Are They Dangerous?”

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/molds_on_food/

On a lighter note:  Suppose you wake up one morning with a craving for pancakes.  You check your box of pancake mix.  Fortunately, it hasn’t expired.  Unfortunately, the recipe is for making 20 pancakes. But you live alone and want about 3.  What are your options?

Option 1: Make only as many pancakes as you can eat, and refrigerate the remaining batter.  It will stay good overnight,  assuming (says Answerbag) it’s made with baking powder and not baking soda.  In fact, you'll find no shortage of pancake-makers who actually recommend letting pancake batter refrigerate overnight (in an airtight container) before use.  Longer than that, though, the batter starts to lose the gas bubbles created by their leavening ingredient(s), which will result in flatter, less fluffy, less tasty pancakes.

Option 2: Make ALL the pancake batter into pancakes, and then freeze or refrigerate the leftovers.  But this option has you eating re-heated pancakes, which can be perfectly edible but rarely withstand comparison to the fresh version.

Option 3: Think outside the pancake mix box and find some alternative uses for the stuff.  You could, for example, make everyone's favorite pancake cousin, crepes.  Or you could find a cool recipe like this one for battering fish fillets, this one for corn dogs, or this one for Yorkshire pudding.  Or, following your creative muse, you could come up with something totally new.  If they can put a man on the moon, surely YOU can come up with a way to make a delectable pizza, minestrone, or salad dressing out of pancake batter, right?