Protein-Packed Cottage Cheese Banana Pancakes

My kids will eat pancakes any day of the week, but the problem with most pancakes is that they don’t have enough protein to satiate my kids. I have to come up with a side of protein to serve at breakfast or they’ll be saying they’re hungry an hour later. Weekday mornings are pretty busy around here so I try to serve pancakes that multitask with protein AND delicious taste.

The protein-packed cottage cheese banana pancakes have been a family favorite for more than a decade! I started making them back when my oldest was a baby and we started doing baby-led weaning. They were a hit with each of my kids as babies, and they still love them as big kids and tweens.

My kids aren’t super picky so I think it says even more about these pancakes that *I* even like them! I cannot and will not eat cottage cheese. It’s not something I ate growing up, and I gave it a good try when my husband was in his personal training and bodybuilding days because it’s such a good source of protein. But I just can’t do it!

Cottage cheese pancakes are a totally different animal though. The cottage cheese gets gooey and melty, and it makes these pancakes so soft and fluffy and delicious. So even if you don’t like cottage cheese, I hope you give these a try!

The Ingredients

One of the best parts about these cottage cheese banana pancakes is that I usually have all the ingredients on hand to make them. I have a handful of simple, staple recipes that I can make at any time and this is one of them.

What You’ll Need:

• All-Purpose Flour: You can use whatever flour you have on hand! I have made these with whole wheat flour, and they are more dense but still good. One of my kids had a wheat allergy so for years I made them with gluten-free flour, and they were just as good.
• Baking Powder
• Sweetener of Choice: I am using zero-calorie monk sugar, but you can use regular sugar, honey, maple syrup, or any other substitute. When my kids were babies, I left out the sweetener and just let the banana do the sweetening.
• Cottage Cheese: I like to use a small curd cottage cheese.
• Eggs
• Banana: You’ll want to use a ripe banana for the best flavor.
• Vanilla Extract

The Process

First, you’re going to mix up your dry ingredients. If you’re using a dry sweetener, you can toss it in here, but if using something like honey or maple syrup, add that in with the wet ingredients.

My 7 year old helped me make these pancakes. Cooking is such great practice for following instructions and measuring so let those little hands help!

Next you can add in the wet ingredients. Most people would probably tell you to do this in a separate bowl, but I prefer not to dirty any more dishes than absolutely necessary. So around here we just dump the wet ingredients right in there with the dry ingredients. It turns out fine- I promise!

Make sure to mash up that ripe banana before adding it in. We like to use a fork to mash it, and then stir it up really well so it’s pretty smooth before adding it in to the batter.

Once you’ve added in all the wet ingredients, it’s time to start mixing. This batter is thick, so it takes a little muscle to get it all mixed up.

Once the batter is all mixed up, it will be thick and chunky thanks to those cottage cheese curds.

Prep your skillet by pre-heating it to medium low and spraying it with cooking spray or melting some butter in the pan. Cottage cheese can go from perfectly golden brown to burnt pretty quickly so I like to cook these pancakes at a lower temperature than I cook regular pancakes.

I like to use a small cookie scoop to drop the batter onto my hot pan. You’ll want to keep them relatively small to make flipping easier. I use about 2 tablespoons for each pancake.

Cook the pancakes for about two minutes on each side. They should be a nice golden brown color and set throughout the pancake. They’ll be gooey from the melting cottage cheese, but not raw looking.

This recipe makes about 12 small pancakes.

Toppings

We most often top our cottage cheese banana pancakes with fresh berries. Sometimes, we’ll add some fresh, homemade whipped cream and that takes it to the next level! We of course will use just regular maple syrup which is obviously delicious.

Leftovers

I almost always double to recipe so we can have leftovers. These pancakes heat up perfectly either in the microwave or in a skillet.

I have frozen these many times, and they do great in the freezer too. When I freeze them, I let them cool completely and then stack them with a small piece of parchment paper between each pancake before freezing. This makes it a lot easier to grab just the number of pancakes you need.

I hope you enjoy this longstanding family recipe. Let me know if you try it!