Monsters, Inc. is a really good movie. The scene at the end where Sully gets to see Boo again? The look on his face always gets me. Also, our fat cat is also named after one of the characters, Mike Wazowski [yes, first and last name, and when we're mad at him we call him Michael].

Anyway, you know what I hate [besides people who talk in movies, poor customer service, poorly made iced coffee and bugs]? Recipes that don’t work out well. It’s like, you have such high hopes for them, you know? You look at the ingredients and think to yourself, “Self! This will be delicious!” And then you slave over the preparation of it and you so carefully put together all of the ingredients, and you finally taste it and ….meh. That happened to me the other night when my favoritest friend Becky came over to have dinner with the husband and I. Luckily, this week’s recipe is something different that I made this past weekend!

Pancakes are a favorite around here, so I make them fairly often. I’ve mostly perfected the cooking time and the flipping, so they’re a breeze to make. I’ve seen a lot of talk of ricotta cheese pancakes as of late and thought that might be something different to try. I found a lot of recipes that involve all this mixing and measuring, separating egg whites, etc., which seemed like an awfully lot of trouble for a Sunday morning. So instead I went with a nice Giada de Laurentiis recipe that is basically just doctoring a a pre-made mix.

Ricotta Pancakes, adapted from Giada de Laurentiis

1 cup pancake mix
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
zest of one lemon

Preheat non-stick skillet over medium-low heat. Stir water into the pancake mix until just combined. Add in the ricotta, lemon zest and vanilla extract and mix until combined, but batter is still lumpy. Don’t overmix. Add enough batter to the pan to make a 3-inch round circle and cook until deep bubbles form all over the surface. Flip and cook an additional two minutes. Either store in oven heated to 175 F or serve immediately.

Now, since I’m kind of indifferent to pancakes, I wanted something extra for mine. So I hustled up a half pint of blueberries, a quarter cup of water, a teaspoon of sugar and the juice of the lemon I zested and tossed it all in a saucepan. I let it come to a boil and then reduce down to make a syrupy, blueberry treat for my pancakes.

These were really good; the pancakes were fluffier than usual, with a nice sweetness to them punctuated by the bright citrus taste coming from the lemon zest. This was likely more evident when topped with the blueberries instead of a gallon of maple syrup, because when the husband was asked what he thought of these, he had no idea they were any different than the regular pancakes I make. Which I chose to take as a compliment, because he clearly enjoyed them. We had them with center cut bacon and eggs scrambled with sharp cheddar cheese and baby broccoli. Mmm… breakfast.