You may not think you need a device to drop batter, but you’d be wrong

Yes, it’s pancake day again soon. Time for the nation to whip up a batter and fish out the frying pans.

Many of us will make a mess of it, though. We expect the first one to be a disaster of course, that’s a given, but all too often the ones after will be stories of varying success.

Too thin, too thick, too stubborn to come off the pan without a scraper. No matter, we gather hungrily around the stove to eat them while the person cooking looks hungrily on.

Much of the mess comes from getting the batter from bowl to pan. Ribbons of batter lead like the trail of an incontinent insect across work surfaces, stove tops and often the floor too.

Well OXO have a demented team of scientists in the bowels of their building who delight in coming up with gadgets you never knew you needed until you try one.

We give you, drum roll please, the OXO Good Grips Precision Batter Dispenser

Fill this boy with up to 1 litre of batter, position over frying pan and pull trigger. The batter flows out smoothly and, by watching the calibrated scale (in both cups, oz and millilitres), you can dispense the exact same amount each time with its tapered shape meaning you can use small or large amounts of batter equally well.

Release the trigger and the flow stops sharply with no drips. For washing up, the silicone valve comes off. There is also a lid so you can keep the batter standing by with no risk of bits falling in.

But it’s not just for pancakes. It’s perfect for filling cupcake cases and muffin and Yorkshire pudding tins and more with no dribbles and at MasterChef speed.

Our only caveat is we found you mustn’t pull the trigger back all the way or it disconnects from the valve with an alarming bang.

No damage done and it reconnects easy enough, but you don’t want to be doing that with a full jug of batter and a load of people standing around watching.

We actually used the test model to make savoury Indian pancakes with gram and plain white flour. It helped us make 4 exact same size pancakes, which we then stuffed and rolled up with a spicy vegetable mix and ate with yoghurt slathered over the top.

Very nice, too.

Verdict: Another great gadget from the OXO Goodgrips range

The OXO Good Grips Batter Dispenser is available at the OXO website as well as on Amazon