Cowgirl Creamery's Cottage Cheese Pancakes with Crème Fraîche

All this week, Sue Conley and Peggy Smith from Cowgirl Creamery will be sharing recipes from their forthcoming cookbook Cowgirl Creamery Cooks, answering our questions, and giving away a book every day.  

Today: Our favorite breakfast staple gets lightened up with cheese -- go figure.

I flipped many a pancake during my eleven happy years as a breakfast cook at Bette’s Oceanview Diner in Berkeley, CA, and this is one of my favorite recipes. You’d expect the cheese to make the pancakes heavy, but the opposite is true: during cooking, the cheese and egg whites work together to make these light. You can use cottage cheese or ricotta. Top them with seasonal fruit and these morning delights are a perfect wake-me-up for any season -- in the fall, we go for apples and pears.

Cottage Cheese Pancakes with Crème Fraîche and Seasonal Fruit

Serves 4

1 pint fruit
1/2 cup sugar
6 eggs, separated
1/2 cup whole milk
1 1/2 cups cottage cheese or ricotta cheese
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon sugar
Vegetable oil for the griddle
Crème fraîche (as an accompaniment)

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

Want to win a copy of Cowgirl Creamery Cooks? Tell us in the comments: What's your favorite pancake topping? We'll choose one random winner each day, and announce them this Friday! (Unfortunately, we can only ship books within the US.)