Balls and Walnuts
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Best lemon ricotta pancakes ever
Best lemon ricotta pancakes EVER!
I suspect most folks’ experience of whole grain pancakes is woeful. I’ve sampled these at many breakfast joints, and they’re almost always flat, leathery, and *ugh* wholesome-tasting. Buckwheat pancakes have great flavor, but (A) they’re almost impossible to find, and (B) when you do find them, they’re usually pretty dense. The trick, as we discovered a few years ago, is to mix the buckwheat flour 1:1 with oat flour (we buy Bob’s Red Mill brand for both — mix ’em together, store in a Tupperware canister in your pantry. It won’t last long; you’ll probably use it up before it goes bad).
Lemon ricotta pancakes, on the other hand, are light and airy (usually) but are almost a little too insubstantial. When I eat them, I think, “This is like a crepe. Good vehicle for something else, but is this really breakfast?” Solution: combine the whole grain approach with the whole lemon ricotta shtick and now you have a PANCAKE!
The proportions below make enough pancakes for two people. Recipe below the cut.
Heaping half cup of flour (1:1 mixture of Bob’s Red Mill oat flour and buckwheat flour)
2 teaspoons baking powder
8 ounces of full-fat ricotta
2 eggs
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon salt
Good slosh of whole milk, maybe 1/3 cup for starters
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1-2 tablespoons of honey
Lemon zest — about 1/3 of a lemon
Butter, maple syrup
1. Combine flour and salt, and sift in the baking powder to make sure there are no chunks of baking powder. Mix.
2. In a separate bowl, beat together all of the wet ingredients.
3. Add the dry ingredients and mix well. Add more milk if necessary to get the right sort of batter (you’ve made pancakes before, right?)
4. Melt about 1 tablespoon of butter over low to medium heat. Pour out 1/4 cup-sized pancakes, three to four for the average frying pan. Do not make restaurant-sized pancakes; these pancakes are delicate, so flipping a large pancake will be troublesome.
5. Fry the pancakes over low to medium heat. You want bubbles to appear and mostly pop. That’s when you’ll flip the first pancake to check for adequate browning. Flip your cakes and brown slowly on the other side (about another minute or two; you can peek at them to check). Serve with hot maple syrup, or fruit, or microwaved marmalade (overkill).
Notes:
You may be able to get by with 1 teaspoon of baking powder. I added too much, but it didn’t hurt the end result.
The amount of flour may be closer to 3/4 cup. Maybe even a little more. I don’t measure shit. SORRY. (Not sorry.) Just eyeball your batter and if it looks way too thin, add more flour. We’re all grown-ups here, right?
W.
