Hello, everyone!

More and more I ask myself what else can I have for breakfast. Something healthy, delicious and different… Then in my hand appeared an idea of following traditions of my family. For example, when we celebrated something together we used to make a lot of food and cakes. One day, my cousin made Nalysnyky (as we call thin pancakes filled with cottage cheese in Ukraine) in very special way. Everyone was so amazed and liked it even more than a cake. With a time, I improved a recipe for pancakes dough in order to get them of the same thickness as crepes but still fill them with cottage cheese. Today, I will share with you my recipe of this great dish.

For 10-15 crepes (depends on the size of pan) you will need the following ingredients:

1. For pancake batter:
   • Flour – 100 g
   • Milk – 200 ml
   • Eggs – 2 pcs
   • Sugar – 2 tbsp
   • Salt – ½ tsp
   • Vegetable oil – 1 tbsp
2. For cheese part and topping:
   • Cottage cheese – 400 g
   • Sour cream – 300 g
   • Raisins – 40 g
   • Sugar – 4 tbsp

Step 1. Pancakes batter

To make crepes/pancakes’ batter, first mix 100 g of flour, ½ teaspoon of salt and 2 tablespoon of sugar together. In separate ball beat 2 eggs with 200 ml milk until it will look like on the picture (for me it took ca. 2 minutes). Then add half of the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients and mix it well together until flour evenly dissolves in liquid (without lumps), and then add rest of the liquid to the mixture. The last thing is to add 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil into the picture, mix it well and batter is ready. Let it stay for 10-15 minutes before starting frying pancakes. This is very important details because during this resting time different reaction are in the batter and it comes all together.

Step 2. Fry pancakes

After pancakes batter has rested for 10-15 minutes, you can fry the pancakes. Use a little bit of butter on the pan, warm it up and then pour a bit of batter on the pan (like on the picture). When your pancake changed the colour on top (became closer to white and no liquid on top), it means that you need to flip it over. Wait 10 seconds more and pancake is ready. Every step is shown on the pictures below.

Step 3. Fill pancakes with cheese

Turn on the oven and warm it up to 180 °C if you want to try my version of baked pancakes. First, we need to mix 400 g of cottage cheese with 40 g raisins and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Now we can start filling pancakes with this cheesy mixture. Put a pancake on plate or a board, add 1 tablespoon or more (depends on the size of your pancake) on the top of pancake and wrap up a pancake like it is shown on the picture. Put ready pancake in the form for baking but remember that you will need to add a sour cream on top of the pancake at the last step.

Step 4. Bake pancakes (optional)

It may sound a bit strange to bake pancakes, but I do this step in order to saturate a pancake with sour cream – it makes them especially soft and delicious. Mix 300 g of sour cream with 2 tablespoons of sugar and cover all pancakes with this mixture. Let pancakes bake for 25 minutes.

These pancakes can served both cold and warm. You can add some fruits inside, or you can make them with meat or vegetables (just use the same amount of sugar as salt in a batter).

Enjoy your food!