A really nice evening in a traditional Latvian restaurant in Riga, over a delicious dinner, I got a great surprise: even Romania and Latvia apparently have no common roots, they do share one of my favorite desserts as a child: the cheese pancakes, papanasi or biezpiena plācenīši however you what to call them.

Papanasi are a Romanian traditional fried pastry made of cheese and sometimes with jam on top.

Romanian Papanasi

Biezpiena Plācenīši are a Latvian traditional fried cheese traditional home style cottage cheese fritters.

Latvian Biezpiena plācenīši

The Romanian ones are made with cheese coated with jam or sugar on top, and the Latvian ones with cinnamon sugar and rosewater syrup, and have a slightly different taste due to the type of cheese, they are basically the same.