pancakes

Lemon Ricotta Pancakes

August 9, 2017

Remember when I made homemade ricotta cheese a couple weeks ago? Well, as soon as I made it I knew what I wanted to do with it: make lemon ricotta pancakes!

If you have never had lemon ricotta pancakes (or any ricotta-based pancake) you are missing out! It is not your average pancake. Instead of being light and fluffy, it’s a bit more dense and creamy. It’s almost like if a cheesecake and a pancake had a baby. Almost.

Just trust me on this guys, it’s good.

I adapted the Kitchn’s ricotta pancakes to make my lemon version, and they turned out fantastic! I am slightly ashamed to admit that I ate the entire stack of pancakes myself. But only slightly. If you had tasted them, you would understand.

Start by mixing together your dry ingredients – flour, baking soda, salt, and sugar – and your wet ingredients – ricotta, lemon juice, lemon zest, milk, and egg yolks. Keep the egg whites separate.

Then mix the flour into the wet ingredient, stirring only until the flour is barely incorporated. Meanwhile, whip the egg whites until they are nice and fluffy. This will help make your pancakes nice and light and fluffy to counter act the dense ricotta. Then fold the egg whites into the rest of the batter.

While you are mixing up the batter you can heat your griddle to medium heat. I love using my griddle/panini press gadget because I can set my temperature to 300-350 degrees, which is the perfect temp for perfect pancakes.

Use any sort of spoon or cup to spoon about a quarter cup of batter onto the griddle. An ice cream scoop also works perfectly. Cook until tiny bubbles form on the top of the pancake and the sides look a bit dry. Then flip!

After another 2 or so minutes, they are ready to be stacked up!

Instead of maple syrup, I made a quick and easy lemon glaze to pour on top of these bad boys. It was just lemon juice, lemon zest, milk, and confectioners sugar. It was the perfect addition to these lemon ricotta pancakes!

Now do you blame me for eating the whole stack?

I didn’t think so!

Fluffy Green Pancakes

March 13, 2017

With St. Patrick’s Day a couple days away, it seems appropriate to feature some green-hued foods, don’t cha think? These fluffy green pancakes were actually inspired by those pancakes the Internet gave Chelsea Clinton such a hard time about. I guess I wasn’t as disgusted as everyone else, because I thought they would be perfect for St. Patty’s Day! Also, what a good way to sneak some extra veggies into your diet?

Before you are completely turned off by spinach in your pancakes, let me assure you that they don’t taste anything like spinach. You can’t taste it at all! So you really could trick your kids into thinking you made green pancakes just for St. Patty’s Day!

These pancakes don’t just get their green color from the spinach. There is also a bit of matcha green tea powder in there to get it an extra umpf. It aslo gives these pancakes a bit of caffeine, which I am not going to turn down in the morning.

Start by blending together the spinach, egg yolk, milk, lemon juice, and butter until it resembles that green smoothie you force down ever not and then (just kidding, I love green smoothies!). Then add the flour mixture to the blender so that the blender does all the work, not you.

I would suggest adding just part of the flour mixture at a time, otherwise the blender will just get overwhelmed and you will end up stirring it yourself anyways.

You should be left with a smooth, green batter. It’s okay if there are a couple lumps though. You don’t want your pancake batter over mixed. Then pour that batter into a bowl with some whipped up egg whites.

Oh yeah, this is the key to light and fluffy pancakes. Separate your egg white from the egg yolk and whip it up until light and airy. Then fold the batter into the egg whites so you have a light and airy batter!

Spoon about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of batter on to your cooking surface of choice. I prefer our electric griddle because it holds a constant, steady temperature ensuring I don’t under or overcook my pancakes.

Then just stack up your pretty green pancakes and top them with your favorite pancake toppings.

I prefer butter (and lots of it) and some maple syrup. Sure that sort of negates the “healthiness” of the spinach and whole wheat flour. But the way I see it, I would be dousing my pancakes in butter and syrup no matter what. So at least this way I am getting in a serving of veggies!

If the Chelsea Clinton green pancakes turned you off from adding spinach to your pancake batter, I hope I have helped sway you the other way. Because it’s always a good idea to trick your kids (or your husband…or yourself!) into eating more veggies.

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National Pancake Day

September 26, 2014

I think children are like pancakes. You sort of ruin the first one, and you get better at it the second time around.
– Kelly Ripa

Happy National Pancake Day! I wanted to share some of my favorite pancake recipes with y’all since they are definitely my favorite breakfast food. I will be celebrating the day after National Pancake Day with a nice tall stack of my own.

Chocolate Hazelnut Pancakes

Peach Ricotta Pancakes

Sugar Free, Gluten Free Pancakes with Strawberry Syrup

Protein Power Pancakes

Gingerbread Pancakes

Pumpkin Pancakes

And even though this is National Pancake Day, there is no sense in discriminating against international pancakes.

Dutch Baby (Pancake) with Berry Compote

Whole Wheat Crepes

What is your favorite type of pancake?

Peach Ricotta Pancakes

August 22, 2014

No matter how old I get, pancakes will still be my favorite breakfast food. They are simple and sweet and remind me of Saturday mornings watching cartoons as a kid. Even though there is nothing wrong with plain, unadulterated pancakes, they might be my favorite breakfast food to experiment with. A great foundation to add whatever sorts of flavors I like. And being that it is summer and peaches are in full supply here in the South, it seemed like an obvious choice to me!

This also seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out a ricotta pancake recipe. A ricotta pancake batter is very similar to normal batter, except that part of the milk is replaced with ricotta cheese, making the resulting pancakes very creamy. Once the batter was mixed, I folded diced peaches directly into the it.

I poured about 1/4-1/3 cup of batter onto a griddle heated up to 375 degrees. Once the pancakes formed bubbles on top, I flipped them over to cook the other side. Each side took about 2 minutes.

For me, pancakes aren’t complete without butter and syrup. But syrup just didn’t seem right for these pancakes. So instead, I sprinkled a bit of powdered spiked with nutmeg and cinnamon over the top.

The powdered sugar adds the sweetness that you would get from the syrup and the cinnamon and nutmeg are the perfect compliment to the peaches.

The pancakes themselves are creamier than normal pancakes, thanks to the ricotta. But they are still supper fluffy! With the peaches mixed directly into the batter, it ensures that there is a little piece of peach in each bite.

What is your favorite pancake flavor? Or do you prefer the basics?

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Chocolate Hazelnut Pancakes

May 19, 2014

If the good people over at Neutella can convince us that their chocolate-hazelnut spread makes for a delicious addition to a nutritious breakfast (because toast is sooooo nutritious), then I can convince you that these chocolate hazelnut pancakes make a well rounded way to start your morning.

Except we all know that this is pretty much dessert for breakfast. Which I am totally okay with, by the way. Life is too short NOT to have dessert for breakfast at least once and a while.

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Gluten Free and Sugar Free Pancakes

May 9, 2014

I really like to reward myself with some little indulgences on weekends. But what I love even more is to indulge myself while still being healthy. One of my favorite indulgences to give a healthy makeover are pancakes because they offer a variety of ways to experiment and are relatively fool proof. To make these pancakes gluten free, I combined 3 different “flours”. Buckwheat flour, almond flour, quinoa flour (which is just dried quinoa processed until fine like a flour).

To make them sugar free, I just used a banana and a little stevia. You could also use apple sauce, honey, or brown rice syrup if you don’t like the banana flavor. I mashed up the banana and mixed it in with milk and eggs before adding it to the dry mixture. I like my batter on the thicker side, but you can always add more milk to make it thinner and thus result in thinner pancakes. After a quick flip on the griddle, I had myself a nice stack of healthy pancakes. The perfect fuel for my Saturday runs.

But I didn’t just stop with making the pancakes healthy. I also decided to make my own “syrup” using strawberries, water, and a little honey. Boy was that stuff delicious!

And I didn’t feel at all guilty about drenching my pancakes in it either.

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Protein Power Pancakes

November 19, 2013

Pancakes are one of my favorite things to make on the weekend. All week, I try to have a healthy breakfast – a protein smoothie with berries and spinach or Greek yogurt. On the weekends (especially now that the wedding is behind us) I like to do something slightly indulgent. Or at least pretend to be indulgent.

Truth be told, these pancakes are hardly indulgent (except for the chocolate chips I snuck in some of them). The secret, protein packed, ingredient is quinoa. But instead of whole, cooked, quinoa like I used in these muffins, I ground the dried quinoa into a flour. Genius, right? I can’t take credit. I got the idea off of Pinterest (of course).

And making quinoa into a flour couldn’t be easier as long as you have a blender or food processor. I used our Magic Bullet blender and it took only 15 seconds.

Once the quinoa is ground, it can be used in place of flour for almost anything. The very nutty and distinct quinoa flavor is still there, so if you are not a fan of the quinoa flavor, then I wouldn’t recommend these. However, if you like quinoa and are in the mood for a hearty and healthy pre-workout breakfast, these are for you!

Enjoy!