Trader Joe's Protein Pancakes Recipe

Trader Joe's Protein Pancakes are small, ready-cooked pancakes made from cottage cheese, egg whites, eggs and oat flour, with 20 grams of protein in a package of four. To make them at home, blend a cup of cottage cheese with three egg whites, two eggs, sugar and vanilla, mix in half a cup of oat flour and cook small rounds over medium-low heat.

What is in Trader Joe's Protein Pancakes

Trader Joe's sells Protein Pancakes from the refrigerator case: $3.79 for a 4.9-ounce package of four in October 2026, fully cooked and listed as gluten free. The ingredients are cottage cheese, egg whites, eggs, oat flour and sugar, then, at 2 percent or less, olive oil, milk, vanilla extract and xanthan gum. One package has 220 calories and 20 grams of protein.

Four pancakes made by the card come to about 255 calories and 19 grams of protein by USDA figures. The recipe is a reconstruction from the label, not Trader Joe's formula, and MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Trader Joe's.

Recipe

Cottage Cheese Protein Pancakes

A reconstruction of Trader Joe's Protein Pancakes — cottage cheese, egg whites, eggs and oat flour, blended and cooked as small pancakes. Twelve pancakes, three servings of four.

5.0 (1)Print

Prep

10 min

Cook

15 min

Total

35 min

Serves

3

Cuisine

American

Ingredients

• 1 cup lowfat cottage cheese (2% milkfat)
• 3 large egg whites
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons olive oil, divided
• 1/2 cup oat flour

Instructions

1. Blend the cottage cheese, the egg whites, the eggs, the sugar, the vanilla and 1 teaspoon of the olive oil until smooth, about 30 seconds.
2. Add the oat flour and blend for 5 seconds, just to mix. Let the batter stand for 10 minutes; it thickens as the oat flour takes up liquid.
3. Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium-low heat and wipe it with a little of the remaining oil.
4. Pour the batter into the pan in rounds about 3 inches across, 2 1/2 tablespoons each. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until the edges look dry and the underside is golden, then turn and cook for 1 to 2 minutes more.
5. Repeat with the rest of the batter, oiling the pan lightly each time, to make 12 pancakes.

Nutrition

Calories:

255

Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.

No baking powder in the batter

The label lists neither baking powder nor baking soda, and the copy has none. The eggs do the lifting, which has two consequences.

• Small pancakes. A round of 3 inches turns without tearing. A large one folds on the spatula.
• Medium-low heat. The egg has to set all the way through before the outside browns.

Oat flour, bought or blended

Oat flour is rolled oats ground fine. To make the half cup, blend 2/3 cup of rolled oats for 30 seconds before anything else goes into the blender. For gluten-free pancakes, use oats labelled gluten-free.

The ten minutes of standing matter. Straight from the blender the batter runs thin in the pan; rested, it holds a round.

The buttermilk pancake mix

Trader Joe's has also sold a Buttermilk Pancake & All Purpose Baking Mix. It is not among the products on Trader Joe's website in October 2026, so the box in hand is the authority for its directions. A transcription of the box from 2010 gives 1 3/4 cups of mix, 1 cup of water and 1 egg for about ten 4-inch pancakes, cooked about 2 minutes per side.

The pancake mixes on the website at that date are a Lemon Ricotta Pancake Mix and an Ube Mochi Pancake & Waffle Mix, at $3.99 each. A frozen Trader Joe's pancake, the Thai coconut pancakes, has its own page here.

Keeping and reheating

Cooked pancakes keep 4 days in the refrigerator in a closed container. Four of them reheat in the microwave in about 20 seconds. For the freezer, stack them with parchment between and reheat them in a toaster.

Another pancake page on this site covers the Golden Diner pancakes. More cottage cheese for breakfast is in the blueberry cottage cheese breakfast bake, and the cottage cheese itself can be made at home, as in the Good Culture copy.