Chocolate Ricotta Pancakes

I had some leftover ricotta from our bruschetta and I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. I don't have a spring form pan so I wasn't going to do cheesecake and I didn't have enough left to make lasagna. I remembered seeing lots of chefs on Food Network use ricotta in pancakes so I started doing some research to see if I had enough ricotta left to try that out. After reading a dozen or so recipes I finally settled on this chocolate ricotta pancake recipe. I did change it a little bit but not much. I took out 2 T of flour from the 1 1/2 cups and added 2 extra T of cocoa powder so they were extra chocolatey. I also did the orange syrup differently. I poured 1/2 c of pure maple syrup into a small saucepan and peeled two clementines. I put the peels from the clementines in the syrup and heated over low heat while I made the pancakes, stirring occasionally. I removed the orange peel and topped the pancakes with the syrup. These were sooo good! They were fluffy and chocolatey, but not very sweet which I love! They were super moist thanks to the ricotta. We were big fans!