Ricotta Pancakes with Warm Blueberry Sauce

These were a tasty treat this morning. Luckily I had everything on hand, or I probably wouldn't have made them!

For the Pancakes:

1/2 cup pastry flour 

1/4 cup all purpose flour + 2T (I used whole wheat flour here)

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 t baking soda

1 t sugar

1/2t nutmeg

1 whole egg

1 egg white

1/2 cup buttermilk (or add a teaspoon of vinegar to 1/2 cup skim milk)

3/4 cup reduced fat ricotta cheese

1 t lemon zest

2 t oil

For the Sauce:

1 cup fresh or frozen, unthawed, blueberries

2 T honey

1 T lemon juice

First start the sauce by combining all ingredients into a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let cook about 10 minutes before serving.

Whisk your dry ingredients together in a small bowl

Whisk the wet ingredients together in a larger bowl.

Combine wet with dry and stir just until combined

Make your pancakes. Optional: sprinkle fresh or frozen berries on pancakes ONCE IN THE PAN. I didn't do this, but if you omit the sauce, you'll want the blueberries IN your pancakes :)

Serve them up :) Enjoy!

(You can also add some syrup, Nick did!)

Carrot Cakes!

Well, this morning, we woke up to a beautiful snow-covered day. I wish I had taken pictures by the river yesterday, because now its too icy to go get some good shots. Here's the best I could do:

The mail building. HAH. Anyways, I had ordered a pancake pan with some leftover wedding gift cards to Crate and Barrel, and thought it was a perfect morning to make silver dollar pancakes. Look at this guy!

So anyways, I made Carrot Pancakes. You could adapt this recipe to make chocolate chip, blueberry, banana, pumpkin, etc. Here is the BASIC recipe:

1.5 cups whole wheat flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1-1/4 cups milk (I used skim)

2 tablespoons EVOO

1/4 t vanilla

Optionals:

2-3 carrots (plus a pinch of nutmeg and 1/2t cinnamon)

or

2 bananas (plus a 1/2t cinnamon)

or

1 cup blueberries

or

1 cup pumpkin

or

chocolate chips (These can go in any pancake of course!)

So, you'll want to mix together all of the dry ingredients. If you are making carrot pancakes, you will need to peel them, and throw them in a food processor with the nutmeg, cinnamon, and milk and blend until smooth. You don't want chunky pancakes, do you? It will yield a frothy orange mixture.

Add wet ingredients and milk mixture. Stir and combine well. Obviously if you don't have the pancake pan, just heat a griddle or a skillet and ladle the size of pancakes you want. Lucky for me, i had the pan

There they are! Little orange carrot cakes cooking up! I haven't mentioned it yet, but these are very healthy! No added sugar and they are very sweet due to the carrot and vanilla.

It will yield about 18 pancakes if you make them small, probably only 6-8 if you make larger pancakes!

We had plenty for 2 of us, with leftovers. Pour on some syrup, or whatever you put on pancakes. Honey would go well on these, but my husband prefers the sugar-free syrup on his!

Enjoy :) And try a different version of these pancakes! If carrot isn't your thing, you have many options!

Chai Spiced Buttermilk Pancakes!

I found this recipe on tastykitchen.com. As soon as I saw the title, I knew i needed to make these pancakes! Unfortunately, I didn't get an awesome picture for you that will make you NEED to try them the way I did, but, hopefully you trust me enough as a "Chef-Wannabe" that you'll know I wouldn't post a recipe on here if it wasn't good!

Ingredients:

2 eggs, beaten

1.5 cups buttermilk

1/2 cup brewed chai tea

1/2 t vanilla extract

Mix these wet ingredients together in a large bowl. Once blended, add the following:

2 cups of all purpose flour (I used whole wheat b/c it was all I had!)

3 T Sugar

2 t Baking Powder

1 t Baking Soda

3/4 t Cinnamon

A pinch of cloves

1/8 t ground black pepper

1 t salt

Allow batter to sit, and thicken, about 3 minutes. Preheat your griddle, or skillet. I also preheat my oven to about 170 when I make pancakes so that they can sit in there and stay warm!

Pour one ladle of batter into the skillet and wait for bubbles to form at the top of the pancake. Flip, and cook until golden brown. Repeat until batter is gone.

I ended up making about 6 large pancakes. But you could probably make any number you want depending on the size!

Add butter, syrup, or honey, and enjoy :)