Dutch Baby Pancake – Large Family Style

At certain points of the year we are a little over run with eggs, this is a surefire way to use up a whole lot of them that is guaranteed to be wolfed down by everyone in the house!
Dutch Baby Pancakes are super versatile, they can be served with a myriad of toppings depending on what is avail and in season!

An abundance of eggs!

There are certain times of the year where we have a huge quantities of eggs, the benefit of this is that in the slow seasons we still get quite a few per day, and also, there’s the whole ‘Chicken Math’ issue lol, anyone who has chickens will understand.

We have a lot of poultry, chickens for breeding, chickens for meat, chickens for eggs, and ducks for eggs as well. We make a lot of different dishes with eggs, and we eat a lot scrambled or fried, but when we really need to get through a bunch, we make Dutch Baby Pancakes in large trays, each one of my cast iron trays has an 18 egg dutch baby pancake in it and between the eight of us, we can generally eat most of two trays in one lunch!

Do I really need to use a Cast Iron Pan? What alternatives are there?

A Cast iron pan is definitely not a must, however, you do need something that isn’t going to have issues with changes of temp, you are going to get the pan really nice and hot, then you are going to add the room temp/slightly cool batter into that hot pan, some ceramics or glass products are going to hate this and there’s potential for them cracking, cast iron is a nice safe choice that works beautifully.

Tips and ideas

Mixing

The best results will be achieved by incorporating lots of air into the batter, it is a very thin batter, so it isn’t hard to work with a whisk and a bowl, but honestly, using a stand mixer, food processor or I use my Thermomix is the way to go. I like to give it a good 30 seconds on speed five, incorporate heaps of air, then I scrape it down and hit it again just to make sure its all well blended but also airy and fluffy.

It will still cook up fine without this mechanical help, but it may not puff up as beautifully as some of the pictures.

Texture

I always say that the texture of this dutch baby pancake is like a baked custard, it is fluffy and melt in the mouth but with the richness and weight of a baked custard or a baked cheesecake. It is not like a pancake, so if you are expecting that cake like texture of a pancake, you will be disappointed, though maybe not, because even though it isn’t necessarily what you are expecting, its pretty awesome!

Another way to make sure that you get the best puff possible is to make sure your pan is very hot, I generally put the pan with the butter/ghee in it into my barbecue (my oven) before I even mix the batter up, so that by the time the batter is ready the ghee is sizzling hot in the pan, then when I pour the batter into that hot fat the edges start to set and climb the sides of the dish before your eyes.

Topping your dutch baby pancake

We tend to keep ours sweet, though because it is such a blank taste palate, you could totally make it a savoury dish.
Apple scrap syrup is a favourite drizzle, along with stewed apples from the shelf, we love maple syrup, who doesn’t, but we don’t always have it, but well cooked crunchy bacon bits and a drizzle of maple is probably one of my fave toppings!

Blueberry compote is delish when I have blueberries on the shelf, but we’ve also had it with pears, plums and peaches from the shelf as well and sometimes we just have it plain!

We haven’t really tried it as a completely savoury meal, but I will have to try at some point because I have had people ask about whether it could be treated much like a yorkshire pudding!