Easy Oven Baked Pancake

Today we had another snow day. I don't know why because our weather wasn't bad. We had maybe a dusting of snow. I guess in the north of the county there was ice or a lot more snow. If their roads were bad, then that is why our schools were closed. I probably will never know why but it gave me and D the chance to make a yummy breakfast. We had the idea of making an oven baked pancake so we started with a recipe from the Recipezaar website. After a discussion with D and reading all the comments, here is what we came up with. I will tell you that we added additional flour, egg and sliced frozen strawberries and strawberry jam in the middle. We also increased the cooking time to about 28 minutes to make up for the additional liquid added by the strawberries and jam. I can also recommend using only one tablespoon of butter rather than the two that the original recipe recommends because there was melted butter pooling on the top of our cooked pancake. Feel free to sprinkle the top with cinnamon and more sugar if desired. For best results, the baking dish with the melted butter in it must be hot before adding in the batter. We used a 9-inch round pan because we didn't have a 9-inch square pan. It worked just fine.

Easy Oven-Baked Pancake

40 min 10 min prep

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon butter
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cups milk
1-3/4 cup flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Set oven to 400 degrees (bottom oven rack).

Melt the butter in a 9-inch square baking dish in the oven.

In a medium bowl beat together eggs and 1/4 cup milk.

In another bowl sift together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt; add to the egg/milk mixture; mix until combined.

Slowly whisk in the remaining 1 cup milk.

Pour into the hot baking dish over the melted butter.

Bake for about 20-25 minutes.

After tasting this pancake, I thought it would also taste really good if you made it with bacon and cheddar cheese. Also, you could use practically any fruit. I could see this being fantastic with apples and applesauce along with cinnamon and sugar on top. We thought peaches would work as would any other berry. This is a very versatile recipe. You can absolutely double it for a larger crowd and putting it into a 9 x 13 inch pan.

I am thinking about making it in my heart shaped pan with a different berry for Valentine's Day!

Enjoy!

The Creative Cook

Ripe Grape Pie

I am always looking for ways to use up fruit that doesn't get eaten because in this house fruit frequently goes to waste. I often make banana bread with overripe bananas but I never know what to do with grapes. I had 4 cups of uneaten green grapes in my fridge. Usually, I would just throw them away. These days, no one wants to waste money, especially on food. So I did some research and found this recipe for Ripe Grape Pie. It sounded pretty good. I used some of the suggested changes that I found in the comments on the www.allrecipes.com website. I didn't want to peel the skin off the grapes nor did I really want to sieve the pulp so I just cooked the grapes whole with 1/3 cup of water for about 20 minutes. I added an extra tablespoon of flour at the end to absorb the extra water. I also added a few strawberries for color. I threw the whole thing into my food processor to puree it. You could add a few blueberries or raspberries for color and flavor. If you left the berries whole, it would probably give the pie a nice consistency.

RIPE GRAPE PIE

INGREDIENTS

2 1/2 cups seedless grapes
3 tablespoons melted butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3/4 cup white sugar
1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).

Wash fully ripened grapes. Separate the grape pulp and skins. In a sauce pan over medium heat cook grape pulp slowly until soft. Rub cooked pulp through a sieve. Combine the sieved pulp and grapes skins.

Mix the flour and sugar together and add to grape mixture. Stir in the melted butter and pour into one 9 inch unbaked pie shell. Cover top with strips of pastry. You can make a lattice pattern if desired.

Bake at 425 degrees F (220 degrees C) for about 25 minutes.

Try this pie when you have some left-over mushy grapes in your fridge. I am sure you could use red or purple grapes, too.

The Creative Cook