banana dutch baby.

Is it really a dutch baby, or a german pancake? Oh what do I care.

The batter poofs up like a souffle and collapses like one out of the oven, only way more dramatically. I tried to rush the tin to the table for picture taking as quick as I could but the pancake beat me to it. It rose to as tall as the tin before deflating, and this is a scaled down recipe using 1 egg. Can you imagine if I made a full recipe? I bet it would look like a mountain range.

This recipe was fun and all, but it was seriously lacking in the flavour department. There was no sugar but there was vanilla. So you could say it was having an identity crisis- sweet or savory? Luckily I'd sauteed some bananas in brown sugar beforehand to add on to the dutch baby just because. I'd also thrown in a few slices of banana in with the batter to cook but I feel that sautéing them separately would bring out their sweet, banana-y caramel-ly goodness better. The bananas embedded in the dutch baby sort of blended in with it and weren't as good as the sauteed ones.

The texture was nice though- soft and almost custardy on the inside while being crisp on the outside. It's a pity that I didn't think to add sugar to the batter in the first place, otherwise it would have been a really scrumptious breakfast.

Dutch Baby
makes 1 5 inch serving
adapted from here

I thought it was a little bland so I would add some sugar to the batter. I didn't include it below but you can add in 1 tsp to 1 tbsp, depending on how sweet you want it to be, together with the egg and milk.

1 egg, room temperature
40 ml milk
1/6 tsp vanilla extract
pinch salt
23g flour
10g butter, melted

Powdered sugar, to serve

Heat the oven to 450F. Butter a 5 inch round tin.

Whisk the egg, milk, vanilla and salt together. Make sure that the mixture gets really frothy and bubbly because that's how the dutch baby gets its lift. Sift in the flour and whisk to combine thoroughly. I still had a few lumps left, but I guess that's okay. Stir in the melted butter.

Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Meanwhile, you can saute some bananas in brown sugar to go with the dutch baby or you could sprinkle some berries on top of the batter before sending it into the oven.

Dust with the powdered sugar and serve at once. Believe me, if you want to snap a picture you gotta be quick because it deflates seconds out of the oven.