Back during the summer, I had a decently-sized tub of ricotta, which I only used a small portion of for lasagna. And that left me with a large amount of ricotta cheese that I had to stretch across about 4 different recipes. This was one of them. But I chose to post this specific recipe at a later date, just to break things up, otherwise I would be posting most of those recipes in the same month, and that would just be too much ricotta for one sitting. So I delayed posting this one for a few months, since it is not necessarily a seasonal one. I wanted to make a ricotta pancake, but inspired loosely by one iconic usage for ricotta cheese, being a cannoli. Cannoli is an Italian pastry consisting of a marsala wine and brown sugary dough that is deep fried in a tube shape, and stuffed with a ricotta-based cream, called cannoli cream, usually mixed with cinnamon oil and chopped chocolate. I took the cinnamon and chocolate chip aspects of that, and ran with that to create this recipe. This recipe is pretty straightforward, being the ricotta pancakes, scented with cinnamon and studded with chocolate chips, and a dusting of ground cinnamon and powdered sugar; if there was anything I learned eating cannoli in Boston’s North End(Little Italy), cannoli are always better caked in powdered sugar, hence why I went that direction. That and a ricotta pancake is moist(ew) enough that it can be eaten without being drowned in syrup or jam. It can be, and it tastes great with those things, but these pancakes can stand on their own, especially with the chocolate chips, being half melted and acting like a sauce running through the pancakes themselves. All in all this recipe takes maybe 15 minutes to make from start to finish and is a quick way to have breakfast and use up some leftover ricotta cheese!

Makes 2 servings:
For the batter:
8oz ricotta cheese
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder
1g ground cinnamon
2 tbsp dark brown sugar
a pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

In a bowl, whisk together the ricotta cheese, egg, baking powder, cinnamon, brown sugar, salt, and vanilla extract. Fold into that the sifted flour and chocolate chips to form your batter. Line a nonstick pan or a griddle with cooking spray and place on medium-low heat. Using a 2oz scoop, scoop the batter onto the pan. Allow the pancakes to cook on medium-low heat for 3-4 minutes, then flip the pancakes. Cook for the another 2 minutes.

For garnish:
2 tbsp confectioner’s sugar
a pinch of ground cinnamon

Mix the sugar with cinnamon and sift over the top of the pancakes to finish.