Meyer Lemon Ricotta Pancakes

Our friends Yaacov and Erin have a Meyer lemon tree and generously shared a bag of lemons with us. Here is a great recipe we found to use some of them. When T tasted these, he said, "Mom, you're a genius!"

Ingredients

Strawberry coulis:
1quart strawberries, topped and quartered
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup orange juice
Pancakes:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus a pinch for egg whites
1 heaping teaspoon baking powder
4 eggs, separated
1 heaping cup ricotta cheese
3/4 cup milk
2 Meyer lemons, zested and juiced
Butter, for cooking the pancakes
Powdered sugar, for dusting

Directions

strawberry coulis

Strawberries:
Toss the strawberries with the sugar and orange juice. Cover and let sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. [We used about a third of the sugar and orange juice since we had nice sweet and juicy ripe strawberries.]

After the berries and sugar have macerated and become very juicy, remove 1/2 of the berry mixture, put it in a food processor and puree until smooth. Return it to the rest of the berries and reserve until ready to use. [We cheated and mashed the strawberries instead of processing. The sauce was amazing, you could eat it on pretty much anything - ice cream, pancakes, waffles, yogurt...]

Pancakes:
Sift together all of the dry ingredients in a large bowl. In another bowl, combine the egg yolks, ricotta, milk and lemon zest and juice, and mix until it becomes homogeneous. Make a well in the dry ingredients, add the wet ingredients to the well and whisk until combined.

Preheat a griddle.

In another bowl, using a whisk or electric mixer, beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt to stiff peaks. Fold the egg whites into the flour mixture in thirds. Do this quickly and gently so the pancakes will be light and fluffy.

Melt small pats of butter onto the preheated griddle, and spread it around with a paper towel to remove any excess butter. Spoon or ladle the pancake batter onto the prepared griddle to desired size of the pancake. When the top of the pancake is full of holes, like bubbles have risen to the surface and burst, the pancake is ready to flip. Flip the cakes and cook until the bottom is golden brown.

Remove the pancakes from the grill to serving plates. Top with the macerated strawberry coulis and garnish with powdered sugar.

Meyer Lemon Lemonade

Thank you Jenn and Marc for the Meyer lemons from your tree! Thomas was so excited to try them, after hearing his Food Network hero Michael Chiarello wax poetic about them on multiple occasions. Jenn was barely out of the driveway when T was saying, "Thank you, Jenny Sue," and slicing them to juice them.

Here they are. I included the knife in the photo to give you an idea how much bigger they are then traditional Eureka lemons you find in the grocery store:

The flash made these look much more orange than they are in real life:

T showing off half (this one with no flash):

The 5 lemons made almost 2 cups of juice!

It was less tart than Eureka lemon juice so we cut the sweetening by half. In our Adventures in Lemonade post, I shared our lemonade recipe and to be honest/more accurate we usually only use about 3/4 cup sugar to 1 cup of water in our simple syrup.

Yum! Thanks J&M!!