I’ve always done protein powder first, then add liquid and doing it the other way around sounds like blasphemy.
Never get any clumps either!
Dry powder on top of a liquid is pure insanity, next you’ll tell me you add milk to a bowl of cereal before the cereal
But from there, there is actually much debate about which order of combining is best. Some say that adding dry into wet leads to clumps of dry ingredients floating in the batter, while others say that actually the opposite, adding wet to dry, leads to, well, clumps.
It would appear that the jury is still out, and everyone despises clumps. But one thing is definitely true: It’s much harder to successfully add dry ingredients into wet ingredients neatly. That order tends to lead to a giant puff of flour wafting toward the ceiling, and settling all over the counters, while a steady, viscous stream of wet ingredients will instead narrowly ribbon its way down into the bowl containing dry ingredients, and nowhere else.
The spine seems to be working pretty well for every other vertebrate though 🗿