Apples and cheese as pancakes

In the grocery Jonagold apples were on sale for 49 cents a pound, a price at which I gleefully snapped up five large, blushing specimens. But when I got them home and took a bite, I found the flesh creamy and sweet, yes, but also soft instead of crisp. Into the drawer they went—whereupon I forgot about them until two weeks later.

Since I had no desire to eat them straight, I decided I had to cook them. I wanted an apple-centric recipe that didn't rely on butter and sugar to make the fruit delicious. After spotting the tub of cottage cheese in my refrigerator, I knew what I was after: apple and cottage cheese pancakes.

I loosely based mine on The Moosewood Cookbook recipe, and no doubt my pancakes would have been better had I made a point of separating the egg whites and beating them into peaks before folding them back into the batter. As it was, I was too lazy to pull out the mixer, and added in my eggs whole. I also added in three apples (probably amounting to two cups of grated apple instead of one), and left out the walnuts. The pancakes I ended up with were decidedly less fluffy, but they were also pleasantly sweet with an apple-pie whiff of cinnamon. And to my surprise the cottage cheese maintained its integrity, appearing as large soft curds dotted throughout the pancakes. I enjoyed these immensely, and might even pull out the mixer next time to make a proper batch.