So I discovered ricotta pancakes Mother’s Day weekend and now I am obsessed. I haven’t decided if I am naming these ‘Keto Mother’s Day pancakes’ or ‘Keto lemon ricotta pancakes with blueberry syrup’. I will probably go with just Keto Ricotta pancakes and likely start mixing up my flavor profile and fruit game. I have difficulty naming Keto recipes, as you might have noticed.
My husband and I are attempting to be on a keto diet and he is doing fairly well where I am crashing and burning hard. I am generally offended by the levels of carbs in kale ect, but I digress. I bought a bunch of different kids of cheeses, ricotta included in hopes to use them in keto friendly meals. I was thinking about using the ricotta in a frittata, but we discovered Mack hates frittatas.
So as I am laying in bed at night doing the mom thing (what is our schedule tomorrow? Oh I should add that to the grocery list….what are we making for breakfast and dinner?) I thought of ricotta pancakes. I had heard of these things before, surely they exist- to pinterest! Pretty soon I found a few recipes and was excited going to bed knowing a new culinary adventure awaited me at breakfast.
The morning of I started cross comparing the recipes and found that I was too lazy to separate eggs and was displeased at some of the levels of cheese in my chosen test recipes. Hungry and with a toddler waiting on me for his breakfast I decided to wing it. These may not be the fluffiest pancakes you have ever made but they definitely have just the right amount of decadence to comfort ratio, and lemon and blueberries only make everything better. The lemon in the cake itself is faint, and as with cream cheese it mostly just enhances the ricotta in that weird way coffee helps chocolate become more magical but not coffeeish. Usually I use a whisk with most pancakes once again out of laziness, but with this recipe it is really better with a hand mixer so you can get the eggs super mixed and the ricotta super smooth with no lumps.
I think the fresh blueberry syrup helps take these to the next level. I tried my first batch with regular syrup and the blueberries cooked in, and they were good but not crave worthy like these. And really, it is just a matter of throwing a few things in a small saucepan as you flip the cakes so not too much more labor intensive. I love using vanilla sugar on the fly from Nigella Lawson, my home cook soulmate (https://www.nigella.com/ask/vanilla-sugar), but regular sugar is just fine for the syrup as well. But seriously, make vanilla sugar, it is the gift that will keep on giving. I have even made variations of it for stocking stuffers- but that is another post.
Can you totally make this recipe with healthier swaps like swerve and coconut flour? Totally, and it will still be tasty. Am I going to do that? Never. Looks like I will start on my diet next week!
Keto Ricotta Pancake Recipe
Ingredients
- ¾ cup all-purpose flour
- 2.5 teaspoons baking powder
- 3-4 tablespoons granulated sugar
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup ricotta cheese
- ¾ cup milk
- 2 large eggs
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- Grated zest of 2 lemon, plus the juice of one
Mix eggs in the bowl with the hand mixer, add ricotta, sugar, salt, vanilla, lemon and mix till smooth. Add in milk, mix, then add in all dry ingredients. Cook on medium heat on your favorite griddle.
Blueberry syrup:
1 cup blueberries
2-3 tbs of vanilla sugar (or regular)
Juice of one lemon
1/4 tsp of vanilla extract
Whatever lemon zest bits may remain on your zester from the pancakes
Throw everything into a small sauce pot and cook/simmer on medium heat until the blueberries are partially cooked down. Remove from the heat and let cool and thicken for about 5 minutes before serving.
adapted from https://prettysimplesweet.com/ricotta-pancakes/
This looks so yummy and I will have to try out the recipe 🙂
Loved the way you shared this Yummy experience! Great and tempting recipe. My Son loves pancakes…will surely try it this weekend.
These pancakes look super delicious. I would love to give these a try.
I love berries and these look so good! Thanks for the delicious recipe!
Looks so delicious! Thank you for the recipe
This looks so, so yummy! I have never added ricotta to my pancakes before, but it would certainly seem like it would make them more fluffy. It also adds great protein. I love the combo of lemon and blueberry too. I will try these soon!