Claire's Blueberry Cottage Cheese Pancakes

Claire’s Blueberry Cottage Cheese Pancakes

Claire Thomson

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Serves: 6-8 pancakes

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: 15 mins

Ingredients:

200g self-raising flour

2 tsp baking powder

3 eggs

240g cottage cheese

200ml milk

Zest of 1 lemon

1 tsp vanilla bean paste

200g blueberries

Big knob of butter to fry the pancakes

Icing sugar, to dust, to taste

Runny honey, to taste

Method:

In a mixing bowl add the flour and baking powder and mix well. Make a well and add the eggs, stir briefly to combine, and whisk in the milk to form a smooth batter.
Add the cottage cheese, vanilla and lemon zest and stir briefly to combine.
Add 1/2 the blueberries to the pancake batter.
Get a good pan hot over a moderate heat, add a knob of butter and heat until foaming, use a large spoon to add tbsps of the batter to the pan and fry until bubbles begin to appear on the surface of the pancake, use a spatular to gently flip the pancakes, and fry on the other side, fry until faintly golden brown on both sides, around 2 – 3 mins each side should do it.
Remove from the heat, dust over with some icing sugar, a good squeeze of runny honey and some extra blueberries per portion.

Engaging Kids

Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.

Kids in the kitchen

The eventual aim, if possible, is to get kids in the kitchen. Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to mean they are with you from start-to-end creating mess and rising stress levels! It can be as simple as giving them one small job (stirring, measuring, pouring, grating, chopping…) ideally involving veg. They can come in to do their little bit, and have fun with you for a few minutes. Getting them involved, making it playful and praising them plenty for their involvement, perhaps even serving it as dinner they “made”, makes it much more likely they will eat the food offered, not to mention teaching them important life skills. Find ideas, safety tips, videos and even a free chart in our Kids in the Kitchen section here.

Activities

While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.

Sensory

Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.

Serving

The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.

Claire Thomson

Claire Thomson is a chef, food writer and a constant source of family-cooking inspiration to her 230k Instagram followers. Claire has written for the Guardian, Telegraph, BBC Good Food Magazine and Delicious and is a Guild of Food Writers award winner for Tomato. She has appeared on BBC1's Saturday Kitchen, Channel 4's Sunday Brunch and BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour. On her podcast The 5 O'Clock Apron, she chats and chops with people from other professions about what they cook for dinner.

5oclockapron.com/

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