Cottage Cheese Pancakes
Cottage cheese pancakes are a fluffy, protein-boosted twist on traditional pancakes. Serve them up sweet or savory!
A number of you were curious about the cottage cheese pancakes I mentioned (in passing) a couple posts back. They're pretty great, and a nice alternative to pancakes that are predominately flour-based. There are never enough pancakes and waffles over here. Lol.
Cottage Cheese Pancakes: Ingredients
The best thing about these protein-rich pancakes is how easy they are to make using common ingredients. Beyond that, they’re wildly adaptable.
- Cottage cheese: Cultured cottage cheese is a great choice here, it’s a bit tangy and the curds tend to be larger. That said, I’ve had good results with every type of cottage cheese I’ve used for these pancakes.
- Milk: You can use the milk of your preference. I’ve had good results with both dairy, homemade oat milk and almond milk.
- Flour: As far as choosing flour goes, I like to use a mix of whole wheat pastry flour with all-purpose flour for this recipe. If you don’t have any whole wheat flour, no problem. Unbleached all-purpose flour is a-ok. And, if you’re avoiding gluten - I’ve had great results using oat flour in place of the flour called for. The 100% oat flour pancakes are more tender, and a bit trickier to flip, but they’re just as delicious.
- Eggs
- Baking Powder
- Salt
- Add-ins: See below
Cottage Cheese Pancakes: Add-ins
Here's the thing with these pancakes. I'm going to share a version I make that incorporates minced cauliflower. The added nutritional bump you get from it is nice, and if you chop it finely enough, no one is the wiser. That said, you can take these in a completely different direction if you like. Work something with added texture, flavor, and nutritional oomph into the base batter and you’re set. If it's not cauliflower try chopped spinach, blanched/chopped nettles, broccoli, dill, finely shredded carrots, etc. It's hard to go wrong, and it's fun to experiment.
Play With Scale
The pancakes you see here are standard size - roughly 4-5-inches or so. That said, you can do, smaller blini-sized versions of these.
Toppings
There are so many options here! You can serve these pancakes topped with roasted strawberries, vitamin C honey, or blackberry saffron honey. They’re fantastic topped with the dill butter from Super Natural Every Day (page 99), even better with the spiced nori butter from Near & Far (page 172). Both of those are on the savory side, or experiment with just about any of these compound butters. Seriously, blank canvas. Have fun with them!
More Pancake Recipes
- Adventure Pancakes (Recipes For The Road PDF)
- Fluffy Pancakes
- Lemon Ricotta Pancakes
- Blueberry Beet Pancakes (vegan)
- Blackberry Saffron Honey
- Saffron Raspberries
- More breakfast recipes
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Cottage Cheese Pancakes
To those of you who aren't cauliflower fans, yes, you can absolutely leave out the cauliflower. Or swap in an comparable amount of any the following: blanched nettles, broccoli, or spinach. With the spinach or nettles - blanch quickly in salted boiling water, drain well, and chop (nearly) into a paste. If all you have is unbleached all-purpose flour, no problem, use it in place of the flour blend called for. To make these gluten-free, swap out the flours for 1 cup / 110g / 4 oz oat flour. And you can use dairy milk, oat milk, or almond milk for the liquid here.
- 1 cup / 7 oz / 200g cottage cheese
- 3/4 cup / 180 ml milk
- 4 room temperature eggs, separated
- 1 cup / 4 oz / 115g raw (or quickly blanched) cauliflower, chopped into rice-sized bits
- 1/2 cup / 75 g whole wheat pastry flour
- 1/2 cup / 75 g all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- scant 1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
- butter or oil, for cooking
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In a large bowl mix the cottage cheese, milk, and egg yolks until smooth. Stir in the cauliflower.
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In a separate (clean) bowl, beat the egg whites until they hold stiff peaks.
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Combine the flours, baking powder, and salt into another bowl. Add the flours to the cottage cheese mixture, and stir until just barely combined. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter with a spatula.
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To cook, warm a griddle or pan over medium heat, melt a bit of butter or oil in it, then spoon a little scoop (say, 3-4 tablespoons) of batter into the pan for each pancake, working in batches. You want to cook these relatively slowly, until each pancake is deeply golden on one side.
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Flip each pancake, and wait until the other side is golden, and the pancake is cooked through. Continue until you've worked through all the batter.
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You can keep cooked pancakes in a 225F oven until you finish, to keep them warm. They're great simply with a pat of butter and a sprinkling of salt. Or, if you want to get a bit fancy, whip up a bit of harissa, saffron or pesto-swirled salted yogurt, or any of the toppings suggested in the above post.
Makes ~2 dozen medium pancakes.
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Comments
i adore cottage pancakes, for their light, custard-like loft, and their added protein oomph. that said, we usually make ours with ricotta, as i've a child who's not fond of the "white bits". we usually take ours in the sweet direction, with a touch of maple syrup, and soft butter at the table. they are out of this world with tiny frozen blueberries, and/or lemon zest, and/or nutmeg, and/or orange zest + tiny cranberry bits. also, the photos, yes, more please!
I love cottage cheese pancakes! I've never had them with cauliflower though. Another version of this is ricotta pancakes with lemon zest mmmm!
They look so good. I love pancakes.
I am so into these.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane! I used to make my children cottage cheese pancakes when they were little as none of them cared for milk. I used the pineapple in them for sweetener and in lieu of flour I added corn meal. Now that they are all grown up I will have to make them your version when they visit!
Yum! I love that they're such a blank canvass. I can't wait to try them with some dilled creme fraiche and smoked salmon.
I was just thinking about buying some cottage cheese and these pancakes have convinced me! Love that you added some cauliflower in there too.
I just made these for lunch and they were simply wonderful. I halved the recipe, used romanesco, and topped the cakes with a dollop of greek yogurt mixed with herbs de provence. Thank you for the recipe
I am fascinated by old photos and have spent many an hour in antique shops perusing boxes of lost and forgotten memories. When looking at old family photos I can sometimes discover some familiar resemblence but whether I'm related or not to the subject or place, there remains a romatic mystery, a time gone by that I long to know more about. I try to imagine what was happening in the lives of the people in the picture or who was photographing that moment in time. I love that you've posted some of your favorites, I thought I was alone in this strange fascination. I'll look forward to more if you choose to share and as always I'll look forward to reading about your travels.
Another beauty!
Love the idea with raw cauliflower. This will definitely be made this weekend! Thanks :)
Always loved the idea of cottage cheese in pancakes for the tang and protein it adds. But the cauliflower-that sounds remarkable!
I haven't seen chopped cauliflower in pancakes before, but it sounds like a pretty good idea. I would definitely love to have these for brunch with a rich cheddar sauce on top. Mmmm...
I love cauliflower and these little pancakes look divine. I have never seen pancakes with cauliflower in them. What a great find.
These are so unique! Love this idea.
These sound amazing! I would totally drizzle them with maple syrup though. Is that weird?
What a fascinating recipe with interesting ingredient variations. Can't wait to try it!
Cauliflower and pancakes! Two of my very favorites in one package - I had to make them for lunch. So what if I didn't have any cottage cheese or milk? I used thick yogurt and half-and-half, and they were terrific....with just butter and with maple syrup (I know they're supposed to be savory, but...they're pancakes). I made half a recipe and got 16, 8 for lunch and 8 in the freezer for a future treat.
HS: Wow - now I have to try this version!
i have some good friends who just made something like this for us a few weeks ago...LOVE it!
This is a gorgeous recipe. This may be an impossible question, but: is there any way to do a non-dairy version of these pancakes? If anyone has a suggestion for a tasty alternative, I'm open to it!