German Pancakes

Here is a recipe for a breakfast dish that I had never consumed nor heard of, but of which my sweetheart was familiar with.  Although it is great for the morning, we generally have it as a dinner course, partly due to the fact that it can be prepared so quickly!  :-)

While there are many variations to German Pancakes, some of which take more than an hour to bake, this one can be prepared and cooked in 30 minutes.  For those hectic nights that you want to prepare something quick, give this a try!

There are a myriad of recipes out there, and I'm not sure where our favorite disappeared to, but this comes close to matching what we like.  I took it from a Hyrum City Sesquicentennial cook book, with the recipe submitted by Eileen James in Hyrum.  I then doubled it and made some other modifications.  If you have some eggs available, give it a try!

Ingredients:

•   ½ cup butter
• 1½ cups flour
•   ⅔ cup sugar
•   ½ tsp salt
• 6 - 8 eggs
• 3 cups milk

Instructions:

• Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.
• Cut butter into several pats and scatter them in a large glass cake pan.
• Heat pan for five minutes while oven is heating until butter is mostly melted.
• Increase heat to 400 degrees.
• Mix all ingredients together; if you have a large blender, that mixes it well!
• Blend until smooth.  Immediately pour into pan.
• Bake for 20 minutes. Edges will expand and firm up.  Center will be moist.
• Lower heat to 350 degrees until done (firm and light brown, but not scorched!)

Serves 6 - 8 people.

Cut into slices and serve hot.  Drizzle maple syrup or sprinkle powder sugar.  Enjoy!

Additional Notes:

• Previous recipes make a smaller amount, so the slices are thinner.  Because our family tends to consume this and still want more, this recipe variant makes extra thick slices.  
• If you want to experience the thinner  variety, or don't have as many mouths to feed, cut the ingredients back some... only 6 eggs, and less flour.
• Also, some recipes go WAY overboard on butter, calling for more than a cube of it!
• This version is healthier, though you can cut the butter even further if you like.
• Definitely use butter, not margarine!

Whole Wheat Pancakes

The story behind these is that we used to make them on cold winter mornings with freshly ground whole wheat flours. The eggs are optional since at the time they said that eggs were unhealthy! However, they are saying eggs are good for you now.  We no longer have the grinder since it went mildewy in Minnesota.  (Nice, warm, humid Minnesota basement.)

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 T baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/4 c. oil (opt)
2 c. milk
2 eggs (opt)

Blend until lumpy. Bake on griddle sprayed with Pam at 350 and serve with honey.

Swedish Pancakes

This recipe is special to me for several reasons. First and foremost because I have many fond memories of Dad making this tasty recipe for breakfast! I also connect because I have Swedish blood in me! And since my father served an LDS mission in Sweden, he got to taste how the Swede's make it.

Now that I have made it for my own family, they love this recipe too! Celeste, Samuel, and Ruth all devour the pancakes, made more healthy by the wheat flour my Dad has chosen to use. Most recently, Ruth even ate six pancakes filled with a variety of jam's! Quite a healthy appetite she has for a little girl of two years! I've cooked up Swedish Pancakes at least four times this year, and I keep tweaking the recipe to match that which I remember my father making. With this version of the recipe, I have gotten very close.

When we went to visit my parents last Saturday, Celeste and Samuel excitedly told their Grandpa that Daddy made Swedish pancakes! I spoke to Dad about it, and he said that the choice to use wheat flour was his own. Many of the Swede's cook them with white flour, which allows them to be even thinner... much like crepe's. Of course, many Swede's are only getting started with the jam. They often sprinkle powder sugar on top before rolling them up.

Ingredients:
  - 1 cup wheat flour
  - 2 tsp cinnamon
  - 1/2 tsp salt
  - 1/2 tsp nutmeg
  - 2 eggs (beaten)
  - 1 tsp vanilla
  - /4 cup sugar
  - 1½ cups milk
  - 1/3 cup melted butter

Directions:

1. Pour wheat flour into a medium mixing bowl. Stir in cinnamon, salt, nutmeg, and sugar.


2. Beat eggs until lightly mixed. Add vanilla and stir.


3. Combine egg mixture to flour mixture. Stir until blended.


4. Add milk and stir until ingredient compounds are sufficiently integrated.


5. The pancake batter should be runny. Thicker batter creates thick pancakes; you want the pancakes to be fairly thin so that they can be rolled up once the jam is spread. Add additional milk if necessary to reach the desired consistency. You'll have to experiment based on altitude, humidity, and personal preference.


6. Melt butter in Microwave; add to the pancake batter and mix.


7. Cook on electric griddle at 275 - 300 degrees. You can also cook them in a frying pan using medium heat over the stove. A grill is preferred for heat consistency.


8. Using a small measuring cup, pour batter as circles 4" in diameter.


9. As with most pancakes, flip when the bubbles start to pop.

Serve: Hot! Spread a line of jam or jelly down the middle of the pancake, and roll it up like taco. Then consume! Instead of meat, your taste buds will be greeted with the sweet flavour of your favorite jam or jelly. I have used apricot, peach, strawberry, raspberry, boysenberry and grape. But my favorite has always been apricot!


Notes: This recipe is not a perfect recreation of what my father recited to me over the phone several years ago. The recipe that my Dad gave me called for many approximations, making it a very inexact science. For instance: a dash of salt, a bit of nutmeg and vanilla, and "enough milk to make it runny." ;-) Certainly with such a fantastic and tasty breakfast dish, I wanted to distill measured ingredients that I could consistently make them myself. I have been tweaking the recipe every time, and now the pancakes cook up very close to the way I remember Dad making them.

I've also cut the recipe back... almost in half. Dad's original recipe calls for a full 2 cups of wheat flour! I quickly learned that while it doesn't initially seem like too much, the amount of batter grows dramatically as you add the other ingredients. If you choose to use 2 cups of flour, don't forget to double everything else in the recipe. After adding "enough milk to make the batter runny," you will fill a large mixing bowl! It's fine for a hearty family of two adults and five teenagers, but if you have a smaller family like we do, 50 pancakes is a tad too many! Unless you have a duck pond nearby that you can take the left-overs to feed! :-) So I recommend the measurements that I have used, and then calibrate the recipe to your family's appetite thereafter.

Don't forget to mix in the melted butter at the end. My father adds it to keep the pancakes from sticking in the frying pan. It's not a problem on my stick-free electric grill, but I still use the butter because it adds a touch or richness to the flavour.

Last of all, I have a special request for Dad: Please try my reduced recipe, and comment on how close I am in both flavour and consistency. I'd be very curious to get your feedback since you are, after all, the one who perfected it while we were growing up. Michelle, Nathan, and Thayne: Feel free to critique it also! After all, you each grew up eating it too. :-)

Alison's Saturday Morning Pancakes

2 1/2 c. flour (more or less)
1/4 c. oil
2 TBSP sugar
1 tsp. salt
5 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 cups milk (more or less)
2 tsp. vanilla
cinnamon
nutmeg
mashed bananas or blueberries or chocolate chips (optional)

Combine ingredients quickly with a whisk. Heat griddle to about 325 degrees. Bake pancakes until bubbles pop and then flip. Serve with warm syrup and butter, maybe top with fruit, perhaps a side of eggs (scrambled, sunny, you decide).