Sweet Ricotta Pancakes

This recipe was taken from Jorge Cruise's Belly Fat Cure Fast Track book.  It's in Section 5 - The Ultimate Carb Swap Recipes.

Makes 4 Servings

Pancakes to the right is this recipe, thicker looking pancakes  are my revisions

Ingredients (see my comments below & alterations to make this recipe BETTER):

• 2.5 cups ricotta cheese
• 8 large eggs
• 2 tspn vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup xylitol or stevia
• 2 tspn cinnamon
• 3/4 tspn sea salt
• 1.5 Tbspn. coconut oil
• Butter, for garnish
• Fresh raspberries, for garnish

Directions:
Place ricotta in a medium-mixing bowl and beat in the eggs, one at a time, with a wooden spoon.  Stir in vanilla extract, xylitol, cinnamon, and salt.

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Working in batches, ladle the batter to make 6 pancakes.  Cook until the pancakes set, about 4-5 min. (Note that the surface of the pancakes will still be a little soft.)  Flip pancakes and finish cooking, about 1-2 min. longer.

These were hard to flip.  

Can be kept warm in 200° F oven until ready to serve with butter and berries.

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MY COMMENTS:

• Just using Jorge's recipe as is, I didn't like the pancakes.  They turned out flimsy.  The ricotta cheese I had was not liquid, but it wasn't hard like some of the ricotta cheeses that I've gotten in the past.  This was a better quality and the pancakes were really liquidy and took a long time to cook.
• To the mixture, I added a handful of ground flaxseed to thicken the batter.  This helped a lot and made a world of difference.

• My pancakes were not huge, as I used a Chinese soup spoon, that would equate to one pancake, which is about a 4" diameter pancake.  It made about 20 pancakes of this size.
• After I made about 16 pancakes, I added unsweetened cocoa powder to make chocolate pancakes to finish off the batter.

• My 2 kids (8 & 11 yr old) and a guest kid (9 yr old) liked the pancakes (chocolate and non-chocolate) with ground flaxseed over the non-flaxseed pancakes.
• I found with Jorge's recipe as is, I definitely need a lot more oil for the pancakes.
• Even though these pancakes are smaller than Jorge's, they still take about 4 min. on medium heat to cook on the first side and 1 min. on the other side.  I have no clue how you flip a pancake as big as he describes. 

Flax Pancakes to the left, Chocolate Pancakes to the right

• Also, it makes no sense to have 4 servings and 6 pancakes.  It should've been 8 pancakes or 4 huger pancakes.
• I Breathe . . . I'm Hungry blog has a cream cheese pancake that I will be trying in the near future.
• Maybe in the future, in addition to the ground flaxseed, I may add almond meal to give it added texture.  The sweet ricotta recipe seemed more like a crepe recipe rather than a pancake recipe.  I prefer a bit more graininess to my pancakes.
• Lastly, I would've added frozen blueberries to the pancakes, but my kids ate the huge bag I had in the freezer.  What little piglets.