Cottage Cheese Pancakes With Custard (Village Cooking Video)

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It was a sunny day. The hens were roaming about, pecking at the ground, and clucking contently. The ducks were quacking and nibbling the grass. Standing in the outdoor kitchen shed was the great cook, Maria Burcuta, blending and mixing ingredients for a cottage cheese pancakes recipe. In fact, for a doubled recipe, for family and neighbors too, because this is the way things work in her community. When Maria bakes traditional sweet bread, she has to bake a few more, for her neighbors too. When Maria stirs in organic fruit from her garden to make traditional plum jam and homemade strawberry jam, or when she roasts freshly picked vegetables to make the tastiest vegetable spread I had ever tasted, her neighbors, drawn in by the really good aromatic smells, gather up around the bubbling cauldron, making conversations about how the harvesting progresses, tasting the result and nodding their heads in approval.

This time a sweet scent of vanilla filled the air, making our stomach growl. Given the fact that Maria has to bake so many portions of cottage cheese pancakes, it comes as no surprise that in the video presented, she doubled the ingredients for the recipe, in order to cook two trays instead of one, but in this article, you will get the recipe for a single tray of cottage cheese pancakes, that is eight servings.

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One thing you will probably notice, which surprised me too, is that despite the fact that she doesn’t scale her ingredients at all, her recipes always come out perfect, but that’s probably the result of her lifetime experience, as she has been working as a cook her entire life.

The origin of this recipe is probably Austrian. In Romania, this dessert is very much sought after and is made with thin crepe-like pancakes, known as clatite. They can be made and served with no difficulty and had for dessert and afternoon tea at any time.

Pancake Ingredients

Take 1 cup of milk, and 1 cup of mineral water, and mix in one cup of flour and a pinch of salt. Stir the batter till smooth and thick, the consistency of sour cream. If either milk or mineral water is not available, these simple and easily prepared crepes may be made only with 2 cups of mineral water, or 2 cups of milk instead. Put on the fire a clean non-stick pan brushed with oil over medium-high heat until hot.

With a ladle, pour a small amount of batter into the middle of the hot pan. Then rotate and tilt the pan until the entire bottom is coated. Let it cook until the edges start to peel away from the pan. Carefully slide a spatula under the crepe lift it up and flip the crepe to cook on the upper side. Set it back onto the stovetop and let it cook for no longer than 15 seconds. Transfer to a plate and repeat.

Filling

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Combine 1.1 lb fresh cow’s cheese with 2 eggs, half of a cup of sugar, one vanilla sugar, and a pinch of salt. Add raisins and orange zest if you like. Mix them all together. Take each pancake, spoon some of the fillings in the middle of the crepe, fold the crepe in half, then again in half and put on a tray lined with baking paper. Repeat until all crepes are filled. The cheese ought to be well drained off, otherwise, a spoon of semolina is added.

Custard

Two eggs, a pinch of salt, vanilla sugar, half a cup of sugar, one cup of sour cream, and half a cup of yogurt to reduce the fat. Mix it slowly and pour over the pancakes until fully coated. Bake in a very quick oven for about thirty minutes, until the custard hardens.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar, or top it with honey and serve hot. Now this recipe is evidently a kind of mother-of-all pancakes and it is very tasty as well as nourishing. Even cold it preserves its supremacy. 

The best of this recipe is, however, that for making it with good sweet cheese, or cottage cheese, but these days, we shall probably find it difficult to discover a real sweet cow’s cheese, and may have to use the nearest substitute, the ricotta cheese, although it is fairly easy to make it (here is our step by step guide to making cheese from fresh cow’s milk). This type of cheese is very appreciated and used in Romanian cuisine for different recipes such as cottage cheese doughnuts (papanasi), sweet cheese pie, or cheesecakes. 

Similar: Smoked Cheese Made in the Carpathian Mountains – VIDEO

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