Breakfast Time: Puffy Oven Apple Pancakes

Good morning!  I don't usually show up here on Saturdays, but I wanted to share with you a favorite breakfast treat.

A few weekends ago, I had a lovely morning with my sister baking puffy oven pancakes and drinking coffee, and  chatting in her sunny kitchen.  It was such a great morning!  I wish I could sit in her kitchen every weekend and have coffee and talk.  :(    Mom would take us out for breakfast at least once a week when we were young: the three of us would wake up early and hurry out the door to get to the breakfast place before we headed off to school and mom headed off to work.   Of all the things I miss, having moved so far from my family, the simple morning breakfasts together are what I miss most of all...

But every now and then, I get to enjoy a morning with them again!

This particular morning, Cori and I decided to make Puffy Oven Pancakes.  Some people call these Dutch Babies.  We both use the recipe from Betty Crocker's New Cookbook.  If you don't have that cookbook, the recipe is on-line here.

These are the perfect breakfast, easy to whip together, and made with ingredients that are in everyone's kitchen all the time.  The only drawback is that you have to wait 25 minutes or so for them to cook, and that tries my patience a bit.  

We discovered that she typically makes hers in a cast iron skillet, beginning on the stove top and then transferring to the oven.  I usually bake mine in my glass pie dish, with no stove top part involved.  We decided to try both pans side by side to see which we like best.  Of course cast iron won, --- cast iron always wins, so from now on I'll be trading my glass dish for my cast iron one.  However, we decided to skip the stove top part and go right to the oven.

We made ours by:

1. melting butter in our pans in the oven while it preheated.

2. layering thinly sliced apples, and then sprinkling with 1/4 c. brown sugar and cinnamon,

3. pouring the pancake mix on top of the apple/sugar layer

4.  and baking in the oven for 25 - 30 minutes while it got all puffed up and golden brown and delicious !

When they're done, you flip them over onto a plate so the caramel-y sugar-y, apple-y side is on top and slice them up.  Top with powdered sugar, pour some coffee and sit down to enjoy.

The recipe says "serves six", so be sure to make 2 if you'll be eating with your sister.   Six servings is just about right for me.  You may find you can eat more or less than that.

Happy Weekend!!