Beautiful Dutch Babies

Photo and recipe courtesy of Choosy Beggars

Pancake: a thin, flat cake prepared from a batter and cooked on a hot griddle or frying pan.

Dutch Baby: A custardy German version made by baking eggs, flour and milk in a metal pan and served with fresh squeezed lemon, butter, and powdered sugar or fruit toppings or syrup. Ten times tastier than a pancake, as far as we’re concerned.

There’s very little one can do to improve a crispy-on-the-outside, eggy-on-the-inside Dutch Baby. It takes the best of pancakes, Yorkshire pudding, and popovers and combines them into one perfect breakfast feast, large enough for two! If you can know an awesome diner that still sells these babies, we’re intensely jealous. For those who don’t, they can now be made at home! All the ingredients are at your fingertips – the oven-safe skillet might be harder to find, but we recommend it, as there’s no other easy way to get that fluffy rise. This recipe guilds the lily with a seasonal blueberry sauce – perfect if you’re craving something leaning towards pancakes.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 1.5 tbsp granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• pinch salt
• 1 tbsp butter
• icing sugar to dust
• lemon slices, optional

• blueberries  (fresh or frozen)
• 2 tbsp water
• 1/2 lemon (juice only)
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar
• 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
• pinch salt

• 6-8″ cast iron or oven safe ceramic skillet

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 475ºF with the racks in the middle.
2. Stir together the flour, sugar and salt in a mixing bowl.  Crack in the eggs and add the milk and vanilla.
3. Whisk the mixture until it is like a thin crepe batter.  Don’t overdo it, it’s okay if there are a few wee lumps of flour left to float around, but you should get a bit of a froth on top of the batter when you stop whisking.
4. Set the batter aside to rest at room temperature for 20 minutes.
5. Put the blueberries in a heat proof dish with a lid, like a Corning Ware.  Sprinkle on the sugar, nutmeg and pinch of salt.  Drizzle in the water and lemon juice.
6. Put the lid on your dish and microwave on the lowest possible heat setting for 2 minutes.  Give them a stir, and microwave on very low heat for an additional 2 minutes.
7. Put the empty and dry pan in your oven to heat up for at least 10 minutes.  The key to an excellent and light popover/Yorkshire pud/Dutch Baby is to have a screaming hot pan, sizzling fat, and rested batter.
8. When the pan is well heated, carefully take it out of the oven (mind your hands and use sturdy oven mitts, please) and dab in the pat of butter.  Because the pan is so hot, the butter will start to brown quickly.  As it melts, swirl it around in the pan to coat the sides. Move quickly, because you don’t want your pan to lose it’s heat.
9. Turn the heat on the oven down to 425ºF.
10. Immediately tuck it into the oven and let it cook, undisturbed (don’t you dare open the oven door and let that glorious heat out!) for 12-15 minutes, or until the top is richly browned and you simply don’t see how it could puff any higher.

10. When the Dutch Baby deflates there will be a well in the center.  Sprinkle the pancake with icing sugar to make it all pretty-like, and then dollop the blueberry syrup into the center of the well.  Serve the additional blueberry syrup on the side.