Cottage Cheese Pancakes with Dried Cherries

Fluffy and moist cottage cheese pancakes

I was looking for a new recipe to add to the rotation of single-serving, freezable breakfast items I stock away for our weekdays.  I had been craving pancakes for a while so it seemed like a good time to try this recipe.  I added in dried cherries and it gave a pleasant tart contrast to the rest of the pancake.  Two conclusions:

• Pancakes take way too long to cook.  Especially when you can only fit one pancake at a time on your single nonstick pan.  I must've been standing there for 45 minutes cooking these.  By the time I was done, I had already eaten 4 of them while cooking and just proceeded to cleaning up.
• I would make this again.  The cottage cheese adds a somewhat creamy component and the beaten egg whites add fluffiness when the pancakes are fresh out of the pan.  They deflate a bit if you let them cool, but they're still tasty.  I love that the cottage cheese is a good source of protein so hopefully 3-4 of these will keep us full enough through the morning.  I've frozen and re-toasted these in the toaster oven and they still taste good.  For those that dislike cottage cheese, it's noteworthy that the typical texture of cottage cheese is unnoticeable in pancake form.

Cottage Cheese Pancakes  
adapted from Smitten Kitchen

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt

1 cup milk (I used 1% milk and it seemed to work fine)
1 cup low-fat cottage cheese
3 Tbsp butter, melted
2 large egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cups chopped dried cherries, optional (or other dried fruit or nuts)

2 large egg whites

1. Lightly butter, oil, or spray a nonstick skillet and preheat it over medium heat. If you are using an electric griddle, preheat it to 350F. Preheat the oven to 200F if you do not plan to serve the pancakes hot off the griddle.
2. Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, cottage cheese, butter, egg yolks and vanilla.
3. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and gently whisk them together, mixing just until combined. Try not to over-stir the batter. Stir in the dried fruit or nuts.
4. Beat the two egg whites until they are stiff but not dry and fold them into the batter. The batter will be thick and bubbly.
5. Spoon 1/3 cup batter into the skillet for each pancake, nudging the batter into a circle. These are thick and might take a little longer to cook than most other pancakes.  Cook until the top of each pancake is starting to dry around the edges and a few bubbles form.  Then turn and cook until the underside is lightly browned. Keep in the 200F oven while you finish making the rest, but these pancakes are best served immediately.