Rainy Days and Pancakes

The end of winter is a bit dreary and I'm tired of grey skies. I long for Italy's sparkling sunshine and and the scent of her lemon groves. March has occasionally tempted me away to sunny southern Italy but more often I'm here, pouting and dreaming of lemons. I'm sulking a little today, so offer you these to sate my senses:


Lemon Ricotta Pancakes with Lemon Curd and Fresh Berries

Serves 2, because that’s how many people live in my house. If you want more, increase the recipe accordingly and make more!

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup ricotta cheese
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk
1 lemon, zested and juiced
Non-stick spray such as Pam
1 (11-ounce) jar prepared lemon curd
Fresh berries, for garnish – use whatever kind you like: strawberries for me, blueberries for my beloved, huckleberries for my native Inland Empire friends, raspberries for my Yankee friends. Make yourself happy and use your own favorites.
Confectioners' sugar, for garnish


Whisk the dry ingredients together in a small bowl – that’s the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, salt, and sugar.

Whisk the wet ingredients together in a large bowl – that’s the cheese, eggs, milk, lemon juice and zest.

Gently incorporate the dry flour mixture into the wet ingredients until just combined. DO NOT OVERMIX or your pancakes will be tough. Just gently incorporate the ingredients together, don’t madly stir or beat them. Pancakes, like children, are delicate creatures and don’t respond well to beating. Set the batter aside.

While the batter is sitting there patiently waiting for you, preheat your griddle. If you use the batter immediately after mixing it up, your pancake batter will expand on the griddle and your pancakes will rise too high and be too fat – like weird little soufflés. Pancake batter needs a few minutes to blossom, its ingredients melding in the mixing bowl before it hits the hot griddle.

When you think the griddle is hot, dampen your hand with a little cold water and shake a water drop onto the griddle surface. If it dances and evaporates, it’s hot enough. If it just sits there in a tiny puddle, the griddle is not hot enough. If the water droplet immediately fizzles into a wisp of smoke, the griddle is too hot – remove it from the heat for a minute and then check it again.

Spray the griddle with non-stick spray. I suppose you could brush it with melted butter or canola oil if you want, but I don’t want. I’m saving my butter to plop on top of the hot pancakes where it will melt into a golden puddle. Yum. For each pancake, pour approximately 1/4 cup measure of the batter on the griddle and cook on both sides until light golden brown. You know how to do this, don’t you? Spoon your measure of batter on the griddle and leave it alone. You’re only going to flip your pancakes ONCE. When you see little bubbles forming around the edge of the cake and a couple of tiny bubbles pop on the surface of the raw dough, it’s time to flip, flip, flip! With luck and practice, you’ll have golden brown pancakes in front of you. DO NOT flip it again. All this over handling will make the little darlings tough.

Repeat until no batter remains. Keep them warm in a single (!!!) layer on a rack on the oven or warming drawer. Don’t stack them or the residual heat will steam them in the oven and ruin your nice pancake texture.

If you’re good at multi-tasking, you can do the next step while your pancakes are cooking. But if you’re better off doing one thing at a time, do this next step while your little pancakes are waiting patiently in the warming oven.

Empty the contents of the jar of lemon curd into a small saucepan and warm over low heat. You can also take off the metal lid and warm the jar directly in the microwave oven if you want – on 50 percent power for 2 minutes, stopping after 1 minute to stir the curd. Drizzle a few tablespoons of the curd over the pancakes, top with fresh berries of your choice, and then sprinkle everything with a little confectioners' sugar. I have a friend with an over-the-top sweet tooth, and she drizzles these with (real Vermont Maple) syrup. That’s too sweet for me, but it makes her happy. Please yourself. I always do.

Yum. Yum. Yum.

Today is a cloudy and drizzly, so I’m going to the kitchen to make these right now. I'm even going to garnish my plate with a few slices of fresh lemon. I'll stop pouting soon.

Hope you have a fun day, too!