An Easy Oven Pancake
Kamran Siddiqi loves to bake and wants you to love it too. He has brought together a collection of the kinds of recipes that you want and need – Insanely Moist Chocolate Cupcakes, blueberry pie, lemon tart, carrot cake, Brooklyn coffee cake and more. His easy-going style jumps out on every page of his book, Hand Made Baking, making his recipes very accessible even to the beginner.
Excerpted and adapted with permission. Kamran Siddiqi, Hand Made Baking: Recipes to Warm the Heart, Chronicle Books (2014). Photos by Kamran Siddiqi.
The very first time I heard about a Dutch baby pancake was on trash television. I’m not one to watch much television, but when I was a high school student, any excuse to procrastinate on studying was welcome. In the midst of the scripted hullaballoo on screen one evening, the characters enjoyed a Dutch baby pancake—a sweet, popover-like . . . well, pancake. It is simple and comes together quickly in a bowl (or in a blender, if you don’t mind noise in the morning). The batter isn’t sweet, so if you prefer a sweet pancake, add as much sugar as you’d like to the ingredients; I think 3 Tbsp should be sufficient to please any sweet tooth. It’s fantastic served as a normal pancake, with a dotting of butter and a thick lacing of amber maple syrup. Or try it with butter and jam, or eat it like a crêpe, with wedges of lemon and a dusting of confectioners’ sugar.
- 3 large eggs, at room temperature
- ¼ tsp fine-grain sea salt
- ½ cup/120 ml milk, at room temperature
- 1½ tsp pure vanilla extract
- ½ cup/60 g all-purpose flour
- Heaping 1 Tbsp granulated sugar
- 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
- Position a rack in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 425°F/220°C. Put a large cast-iron skillet in the oven.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and salt until they’re light in color. Whisk in the milk and vanilla. Vigorously whisk in the flour and sugar until all lumps are gone, about 20 seconds.
- Carefully remove the cast-iron skillet from the oven. (Remember to put an oven mitt on before handling the hot pan—I’ve forgotten to do so, and it’s very painful!) Add the butter to the pan. Allow the butter to melt, and cajole it around and up the sides of the pan with a pastry brush (I prefer to use a heat-resistant silicone pastry brush to do this).
- Pour the batter into the hot pan and return the pan to the oven.
- Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the center is set and the edges are puffed and a lovely light golden brown.
- Using a silicone spatula, remove the Dutch Baby from the pan and transfer it to a wire rack for 3 minutes. Immediately slice it up and dole it out.
Author’s Notes: For a quicker method, get out a blender to mix the batter; however, as I’ve mentioned in other recipes, I always find an excuse to avoid the clamor of powerful kitchen machinery early in the morning. If you do get lumps in your batter with the mixing method explained in this recipe, simply run everything through a sieve—lumps begone!
You don’t need a cast-iron skillet to make this recipe. You can simply use a 9-in/23-cm cake pan or a skillet with an ovenproof handle. If you’re using a cake pan, put it on a rimmed baking sheet to make transporting it in and out of the oven easy.
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