Big Apple Pancake

Mornings can't come soon enough for one reason. Breakfast is by far my favorite meal.  I could probably eat some type of breakfast fare at every meal and be perfectly satisfied.  As evident in a previous post, pancakes are a staple to our breakfasts and recently I discovered an amazing soufflé-like pancake, the dutch baby.   More like a custardy, strudel-y pancake cousin, this pancake surprises your eyes and your taste buds which I think are equally important to impress.  And a nice little bonus to this pancake is that you can prep the rest of your breakfast without trying to flip the pancakes at the same time as the bacon.  An effortlessly easy breakfast after a long and stressful week? Yes, please.  Because who really needs to finish out a laborious week with an equally laborious breakfast? Not this chick.  I believe there should be more recipies like this: Gather ingredients. Dump 98% of them in the blender.  Turn on the blender.  Pour contents of blender into a cast iron skillet.  Put the skillet in the oven…wait…take out of oven…enjoy! I mean who can’t cook like this?!

There are few things I look forward to more than weekend breakfasts and the discovery of this pancake has succeeded to make me wish everyday started with “S”.

Adapted from my Epicurious App:

Big Apple Pancake

INGREDIENTS:

½ stick unsalted butter

1 large sweet apple (Gala, Golden Delicious, Fuji) peeled, cored, and cut into ¼ inch wedges

½ c whole milk (it’s better for you people, the other stuff is just white water)

½ c all-purpose flour (whole wheat works here too)

4 large eggs (preferably organic, free range)

3 T. granulated sugar

½ t. vanilla

¼ t. salt

½ t. cinnamon

Powdered sugar for dusting

SPECIAL GEAR: 10 in well seasoned cast iron skillet or other oven proof skillet

PREPARATION:

Make sure your oven rack is in the middle of your oven and preheat it to 450 degrees

Melt the butter in the skillet over medium heat and transfer 2 tablespoons to the blender.  Add the apple wedges and cinnamon to the remaining butter in the skillet and sauté until they begin to soften, about 3 to 5 minutes.

While the apple is cooking, add milk, flour, eggs, granulated sugar, vanilla, and salt to butter in the blender and whip it up until smooth.  (I ran mine about a minute the second time I made this to really get some air in it which I must say really helped the puffiness).

Then pour the batter over the apples cooking up in the skillet and stick the whole thing in the oven.  Bake until pancake is puffed and golden, about 15 minutes. 

Take out of the oven. Dust with powdered sugar.  Scoop out a wedge and enjoy!

I’ve made this a few times now and each time I cannot believe it took me this many years in the kitchen to discover such a breakfast treat.  You can bake it without the apples and slather them on top once the pancake comes out of the oven. You can eat it plain with maple syrup and butter.  You can make compote of whatever fruit you have and pile it on top of the puffed perfection.  Just like regular pancakes, this little ‘baby’ has limitless possibilities.


Homemade is better!
--L