German/Lemon/Egg Pancakes

Submitted by Fish

After posting about them in the favorite breakfast food thread, I actually made German Pancakes for myself. This was a learning experience, as I had never made them myself before, but had received the recipe from my mother some time ago. These are not German Potato pancakes, which is what most people ask me about. I don't know if the recipe is even German in origin, I just know that I grew up calling them Lemon pancakes, then was told that the recipe says they're "German Pancakes." One of my roommates makes a very similar dish and she calls it Egg Pancakes. Call it what you like, here it is:

(at this point I went downstairs to the kitchen to collect my cookbook...and found I had left a can of soup cooking on the stove...it had boiled down quite a bit and some of it is now attached to the bottom of my pot )

Ingredients:

• 2 cups water
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 10 eggs
• 1/3 cup powdered skim milk
• 3 1/4 cups flour (sifted)
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• a pinch of nutmeg
• 1 cup butter

Also, for topping: 1 bag of lemons powdered sugar

Method

If you haven't guessed already with the butter, heavy cream, and 10 eggs, this is a rich recipe, and eating it on a regular basis will make you a buttertroll in no time. I have it probably 4 times a year or so. The recipe as is says it serves 6 people. I tried to serve 7 college kids with it (including myself) with a pound of bacon to accompany it, and it wasn't quite enough.

Kitchen utensils required: Big bowl, measuring stuff, mixer or whisk, several medium-large pans that are ok to put INSIDE the oven (cast-iron would be best, but many pot/pan sets have handles that are heat-resistant to a point)...a baking dish of a decent size should work ok too.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. If you're using cookware that can't take that kind of heat, get it as hot as your pans can take...just adjust the cooking time accordingly.

Get yourself a big-ass bowl, and combine the water, heavy cream, and powdered milk. Beat this mixture until its smooth, then add the eggs (I'd recommend cracking them all into another container first, as picking the shells out of the white mixture you now have isn't very easy), the powdered sugar, flour (recipe says sifted for accuracy of measurement...I read somewhere that whisking the flour will have the same effect, and that's what I did), salt, baking powder, and nutmeg. Beat all of this until it is smooth. I'd recommend a mixer for best results, but I got by all right with a whisk.

It should look something like that.

Now take your med-large pan. My pans are teflon-coated, with handles that are ok in the oven up to 375 degrees. This isn't quite what the recipe would like you to have, but I made it work. Just, please, don't melt your cookware in the oven, make sure if you use your pans that the handles can handle the heat you're using. If in doubt, a baking pan will do the trick. Put 2 tbsp. of butter in the pan (you can pre-melt the whole batch of butter if you want, or melt it 2 tbsp. at a time in the pans...I pre-melted it in the microwave) and, once melted, swirl it around the pan to coat it. Add approximately 1/2 a cup of the batter to the pan, and swirl that around as well. This should leave you with a relatively thin layer (1/4" or so) of batter in the bottom of the pan.

If your oven is ready to go, pop this baby in there. I had two different sized pans to use (8" and 10" I think) so I used them both. I just staggered their location in the oven so that one wasn't blocking the heat to the other from below.

As my pans can only take 375 degrees in the oven, it took them a little longer than the 12 minutes expected at 400 degrees. Also, the larger pan obviously took a little longer to cook the larger pancake than the little guy. Just keep checking on them.

This is the part that sucks though. You've probably already thought of it, but if you haven't, here it is: even if you have more pans than this, your oven probably can't accomodate them...so you can only cook 2 of these babies at a time. This makes dinner sort of a drawn-out process, with the cook eating last, unless you keep them warm somewhere else while you keep pumping them out. I opted to go with the first option, watching my roommates enjoy the fruits of my labors while I slaved away .

Anyway, while this is going you should prepare your topping. I prefer lemon and powdered sugar, though I have noticed there are recipes for all sorts of fruity syrups and toppings floating around the Internet. If you like lemon at all though, I suggest trying this topping...its really easy too.

Just halve all of your lemons, and juice them. If you don't have a juicer, squeeze those suckers.

Alternatively, you could buy the juice. But I like it better freshly squeezed

Once your pancakes start to brown around the edges, and curl away from the sides of the pan, they're probably ready to come out (the small pan in the picture from the oven is pretty close to done). Make sure the middle isn't still soggy though, that sucks. GRAB A HOT MITT and pull these guys out.

Make sure you remember to keep that hot mitt handy, because seeing a pan on the stovetop, you don't always think to have a hot mitt on...I grabbed the 375 degree handles on my pans with no hot mitt at least 4 times making these things.

If you have something standing by to keep them warm, shove them in there (a toaster oven may do the trick) or if you're serving them up immediately, slap them on a plate.

Serving

Add some lemon juice, I like a lot

Then sprinkle some powdered sugar on it to counter-act the sour lemon juice, and you have a gorgeous pancake:

Just be careful not to add too much lemon if you don't like sour stuff

Now enjoy the cleanup

Notes:

• I'm assuming you could remove some of the butter troll aspect from this recipe by using a lighter oil instead of butter, and some 2 percent milk instead of heavy cream, but I haven't tried it.

• My roommate who makes "egg pancakes" says her recipe is very much like that. She also pan-cooks hers on the stovetop, which makes a thinner pancake...more like a crepe. I prefer the oven method. If you do want to watch your fat intake and such, feel free to experiment, but I'd recommend trying it once this way, just to see what you're missing out on eating so healthy