Sunday, February 15, 2015

Puffed Oven Pancake

I've been making Puffed Oven Pancake as a weekend breakfast for years.  It's easy. It's child-friendly, It's delicious. It has no added sugar.  Most of the ingredients can be locally sourced.



Once when one of my husband's aunts asked him if I was a gourmet cook, he mentioned puffed oven pancake as an example of my culinary acumen. I was surprised.  A puffed oven pancake takes 1/2 an hour to make. This was the same week that I made a daffodil cake, which was also delicious and took several hours. This recipe is so simple it is almost cheating.

Puffed Oven Pancake

Ingredients

4 eggs
1 cup flour (any kind you like. I've used white, wheat, gluten free, and even rolled oats)
1 cup milk (dairy, or whatever non-dairy milk product you like)
3 Tbs butter (I have successfully substituted coconut oil)
1 or 2 apples sliced
cinnamon

Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 450.
  2. Melt the butter in a 10" iron skillet in the pre-heating oven.
  3. While the butter is melting, put the eggs in a blender and blend at high speed for 2 minutes.
  4. Add the milk and flour to the blender and blend for another minute.
  5. Arrange the apples in the butter in the bottom of the hot skillet.
  6. Pour the batter over the apples. Sprinkle with cinnamon.
  7. Bake for 10 minutes.
  8. Reduce the temperature to 350, and bake for another 10 minutes, until puffy and golden brown.
I was out of apples, the other day, and used frozen blueberries, sliced frozen strawberries, and sliced bananas.  It was delicious.  I've been meaning to try peaches, but oven season and peach season don't overlap much.

When the kids got a little older, I used 6 eggs, 1.5 cups milk and 1.5 flour.  That worked well, but the apples floated around in the batter, and it was a little harder to get it to look symmetrical.





Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Easy Egg Casserole

I love this recipe. Nearly everything can be sourced locally.  It uses up what vegetables you are harvesting at the moment. You can use up leftovers. You can bake it in whatever casserole dish is clean at the moment. (Yeah, I didn't wash the dishes last night. So shoot me.) If you like cheese, sprinkle some over the top before you bake it. If you like sausage or ham, add some in with the vegetables.

It's so easy and flexible.  The basic method: saute some vegetables, pour eggs over the top, bake.

Easy Egg Casserole

1 tsp olive oil or butter
1 medium onion, chopped
1 garlic, minced
2-4 cups chopped vegetables* of your choice
1/2 - 1 tsp herbs of your choice (thyme, basil, parsley are nice)
8 eggs
1/4 cup milk (or your favorite unsweetened milk-like product)
  1. Saute the onion, garlic, and vegetables in the olive oil.  Add the herbs. 
  2. Beat the eggs.  Add the milk, and stir until everything is uniform (or whatever).
  3. Spray or butter a rectangular casserole dish.  I've used everything from 7"x11" to 9"x13" and it comes out fine.
  4. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes or until set in the middle.
 * Here are some vegetable options:
  • mushrooms 
  • broccoli
  • greens (spinach and kale are particularly good)
  • leftover cooked potatoes (yum!), carrots, green beans
  • grated raw carrots
  • peppers
  • summer squash
Here's another photo: