Kingsmill Love to Toast Pancakes €2.19 for 300g, €7.30 per kg Highs: These "scotch pancakes" can be grilled and ready to eat in two minutes and they taste surprisingly pleasant, although they are a whole lot more like an actual cake than any pancake Pricewatch has ever come across.

They are considerably lighter and more airy than they look and are remarkably easy to eat.

Lows: And that is why the high levels of salt and sugar make them so alarming. One single pancake (which the manufacturer claims is "giant", although it doesn't look all that big to us) has 31 per cent of an adult's GDA of salt as well as a significant amount of sugar, and for that reason alone we could not recommend these.

Verdict: Too salty and too sweet

Star rating: **

Marks & Spencer Irish Pancakes

€1.49 for 280g, €5.32 per kg

Highs: These are very pleasant-tasting pancakes indeed, although we cannot verify the claim from M&S that they're what Irish pancakes are supposed to taste like. They are completely hassle-free and can be toasted and ready to eat in around a minute. There isn't anything too suspect lurking amongst the ingredients and they were not as dear as we feared they might be.

Lows: These do, however, score a great big zero on the Pricewatch Fun-o-meter: we fear children would be singularly unimpressed if these were the best you could rustle up on Pancake Tuesday. The individual pancakes were also a little small.

Verdict: Perfectly pleasant

Star rating: ***

Homemade pancake mix

€0.80 for 10 pancakes

Highs: Far be it from Pricewatch to blow its own trumpet, but these were the business. They are made with eggs, flour, milk, water and butter, and the whole process takes 15 minutes from start to finish. It works out considerably cheaper than the competition - and then there's the feel-good factor: while they don't taste markedly different from some of the ready-made options, at least you know you've made them from scratch and know what has gone into them.

Lows: The mess made was ferocious: flour all over the place, washing-up stacked up and the occasional elegantly flipped pancake ending up on the floor.

Verdict: The business

Star rating: *****

Odlums Pancake Mix

€1.48 for 500g, €2.96 per kg

Highs: The pancakes that we got from this powdered mix were perfectly pleasant and they tasted almost identical to the homemade alternative.

Lows: The mess they left behind, sadly, was also pretty similar. You have to add two eggs to this (which will cost you an additional 60 cent) so we couldn't help wondering just what this pancake mix was bringing to the party and what we were spending the money on. An equivalent amount of Odlums plain flour costs 62 cent, so why we had to spend over twice that amount for some dried milk powder and some stabilising agents to be added is anyone's guess.

Verdict: Grand

Star rating: ***

Betty Crocker Pancake Shaker

€1.89 for 155g, €12.20 per kg

Highs: If you're looking for an effortless way to have freshly made pancakes tomorrow then this might well be it. You just add water to the powder in the plastic container, shake it about the place vigorously for about a minute and there you have it. Freshly made pancake mix with no washing-up, no whisking, nothing. The end product is absolutely fine, if a little saltier than we would have liked.

Lows: It does feel a lot like cheating and it is a comparatively pricey way to make your pancakes but if you're pressed for time either before or after eating them, these are pretty hard to beat.

Verdict: A lazy option

Star rating: ****