As a substandard cook but passionate weightlifter, I spend a lot of my time trying to come up with more inventive, healthy and delicious ways to ‘carb up’ up on the days in which I need to.
It is in this hungry and physically depleted state in which a lot of my low tech recipes seem to emerge. You could say they’re born of necessity. Or you could say that I’m too exhausted to create anything particularly inventive. Perhaps both are right.
One of the things I discovered last year but enjoy trying to put into everything is quark cheese. High in protein, low in fat, and mild in taste, I suppose it was inevitable that I’d try to sandwich them into one of my most favourite carby things, pancakes. I use plain quark from the Lake District Dairy Company, but really any plain quark cheese should do the trick (note: check the ingredients for hidden nasties!)
So yeah, enter this recipe. The most recent take on both quark and pancakes, happening at the same time…
How to Do The Pancake
We used the tub of quark as the milk substitute, beating it well. However, if you feel that the batter is too thick, you can add a drop of milk, or coconut milk for the lactose free. There’s egg as well which adds more liquid, or viscosity, to the rice flour.
The quark gives the mix some of the stickiness that the gluten in conventional wheat flour creates.
When fried, the result seems similar to a Blini (which I believe are made with buckwheat)
Here’s the recipe. I like to douse mine in honey of many kinds, or melt chunks of dark chocolate onto the top and then add the honey. Sometimes there’s Greek yoghurt in there too. Or blueberries. Or all of them. I am a depraved creature when I am hungry…
Hope you enjoy it!
- Small, 20 cm frying pan
- I 250g tub of plain quark (we used one from Lake District Dairy Company )
- 6 ounces of rice flour
- 3 eggs
- A knob of butter for frying
- Sweet or savoury toppings for cooked pancakes: try honey, yoghurt, sliced summer berries, grated cheese, cooked vegetables...
- Whisk together, or use blender, to make thick smooth paste of quark and flour.
- Add eggs and whisk till a thickish batter is obtained. If you like it a bit thinner, then you can dilute it with a small amount of milk or water.
- Heat a small knob of butter in the pan and when it’s really hot pour in about one sixth of the batter, enough to coat the bottom of the pan.
- Let the batter set in the pan for a few minutes and then use a spatula to make sure it doesn’t stick; flip it over and cook the other side for a minute before sliding onto a plate.
- Add your topping and enjoy whilst hot!
- Rice flour makes quite a grainy batter and owing to lack of gluten it is not so pliable as wheat flour pancakes; if made very thinly they resemble the dhosas of Indian cuisine.
- Of course, you can experiment using other sorts of flours to get different flavours and textures in your pancakes.
- You could also use olive oil as your frying medium - but we like butter for it's heat stability.