There’s something about warm, springtime weather and lemon that goes together perfectly. As soon as the sun warms up and things begin to turn green, I start craving lemony things. While I feel for my comrades up in the northeast right now and their mountains of snow they are still getting, I AM enjoying the fact that Texas is green, flowers are blooming, and bees are buzzing. And that these pancakes exist.
Because these pancakes- and the cream cheese frosting- contain no refined sugar, they aren’t very sweet. Which is exactly what I was wanting. The pancakes themselves are sweetened only by the raspberries, and the addition of lemon zest and juice makes them fairly tart. You can add a little sugar, maple syrup, honey, or other sweetener to the batter to counter the tartness if you want. The cream cheese drizzle, made from a mixture of maple syrup, softened cream cheese, and milk, is fairly sweet on its own. But if you want something sweeter, you can substitute some of the milk with more syrup.
Speaking of the maple cream cheese drizzle. In the unlikely event that you have any extra, I recommend putting it on some fresh berries and topping with a little bit of turbinado sugar for a quick treat or dessert. Somehow we ended up with extra (I have no idea how), but we did, and this was the perfect way to use it up. I used fresh raspberries for this, but you can use froze. I also chopped them up a bit in order to create a more consistent texture for the pancakes and disperse the flavor a bit more. You can also use whole wheat flour if you want to make them a bit healthier- see recipe notes for how. Here’s the recipe for Lemon Raspberry Pancakes with Maple Cream Cheese Drizzle! And if you like these, you’ll love these fluffy berry oat pancakes and these healthy pumpkin pancakes!
