Forced rhubarb with its bright pink stems is currently in season and is the perfect foil to these light vanilla pancakes. I’ve used a mixture of cottage cheese and egg white to ramp up the protein content of the pancakes to keep you full for longer. You can use this base recipe to make both sweet and savoury pancakes but I’ve kept these simple and just used a little vanilla paste.
INGREDIENTS (makes about 20 pancakes)
For pancakes
300g low fat cottage cheese
100g gluten free oats
2 eggs
1 tbsp milk
1 tbsp vanilla paste (I use Little Pod vanilla paste)
20ml honey or agave nectar
100ml egg whites (I used St Ewes)
1 tsp olive oil
For poached rhubarb
6 large stems of rhubarb - chopped into 4cm lengths
1 tbsp rose tea
1 tbsp dried rosebuds
6 cardamom pods - crushed
juice of 1 blood orange
2 tsp honey
METHOD
Prepare the poaching liquid by adding the rose tea, rosebuds and cardamom pods to 300ml water and bring to the boil.
Add the honey and blood orange juce and simmer for 5 minutes.
Add the chopped rhubarb and take the pan off the heat.
Allow the rhubarb to cook in the hot poaching liquid as it cools.
In the meantime, make the pancake batter by blending together the cottage cheese, oats, 2 eggs, milk, vanilla paste and honey.
Whisk the egg whites until they are in stiff peaks.
Fold in one spoon of the stiff egg whites into the pancake batter. Repeat until all the egg white is incorporated.
Heat a non stick frying pan and add the olive oil.
Drop 1 tbsp of the pancake batter into the pan to make small individual pancakes.
Cook until the edges of the pancake start to roll in and small bubbles appear – this should take about 90 seconds.
Flip and cook the on the second side – this should take about 45 seconds.
Stack up and serve with the poached rhubarb, taking care to leave the tea and cardamom pods in the poaching liquid.