Next week is pancake day in England!
This reminded me that it’s about time I put up another pancake receipe and here you are.

As I was looking through my fridge to see what kind of pancakes I could make, I found some ricotta and decided I would use it to make some cheese blintzes – thin, crepe style, pancakes filled with ricotta (or quark or cream cheese) and served with a berry sauce, for which I always have some berries in the freezer. 

Cheese wise you don’t have to use ricotta, quark works very well too. And if you want a creamier texture, cream cheese will work just as well – see which cheese filling you like the most…

For the crepes:

• 3 eggs
• ½ tsp salt
• 110g flour
• 1 tbsp oil
• 325ml milk
• extra oil for the pan

For the filling:

• 500g ricotta (or quark or cream cheese)
• 1 egg
• 60g sugar
• 30g flour
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

For the raspberry sauce:

• 500g raspberries (fresh or frozen)
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 75g sugar

Start by making the raspberry sauce, which requires nothing more than adding all ingredients to a pot and slowly bringing it to a boil, stirring the sauce occasionally as you do so. Keep it simmering on a low heat for around 5 minutes then turn off the heat and leave aside to cool.

For the crepes, whisk the eggs, flour, salt and oil together and then slowly add the milk, so that you don’t get lumps in the batter.

Heat a frying pan and add some oil, before baking the crepes, which should be really thin, so be careful not to add too much batter in one go. Depending on the size of your pan you will probably need around 6 tbsps of batter per crepe.

As soon as you pour the batter in the pan, swirl it around so the pan base is covered by one thin layer of batter. Once the edges of the crepe are getting brown, take it out on a tea towel covered plate, with the baked crepe side facing up (the unbaked side gets more baked once the blintz is filled). Keep baking all the crepes before you move on to the next step.

For the filling, Mix all the ingredients together and spoon a table spoon it in the middle of the bottom third of each crepe. Fold the bottom edge over it, followed by the sides and finally the top edge, so you end up with a little parcel. Continue you filling the rest of the crepes like this.

Heat some more oil in a pan and bake the filled crepe parcels in it for a few minutes until they go crispy and start to brown, when they are ready to be turned over and baked on the other side.

Serve with a serving of the raspberry sauce…which will also keep for a few days in the fridge, if you have any left, just as any uneaten blintzes will and which can be re-heated in the microwave!