One of the Cutest Recipes I Know...Dutch Babies!

For those of you who missed my recent cooking tutorial at Natural Grocers, I shared one of my tried-and-true recipes my whole family has grown to love! This Dutch Baby/ German Pancake recipe is actually on of the very first recipes I learned in good ol' home ec class...except now, it's (obviously) my cleaned up, gluten-free version! This versatile dish is something I love to contribute to gatherings because A. It's easy, B. It's delicious, and C. It's super impressive looking and you don't have to invest much time or energy whatsoever!

What makes this pancake different from most is that it's baked in the oven and it's primarily egg-- so, bonus protein. You can either create something beautiful family-style in a cast iron skillet or a pie pan-- OR, my favorite, in muffin tins for individual-sized cups. (You will see in my images the variety of versions.)

Ingredients:
- 1 1/4 cup grass-fed butter
- 1 cup brown rice flour
- 1 cup almond milk
- 6 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1/8 tsp of Himalayan or sea salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. If you're using a skillet, pie pan, or baking dish, melt all of your butter in the oven while the oven is preheating. If you're using muffin/ cupcake tin, evenly distribute butter into each cup. This recipe usually will yield approx 24 cups. Note: Watch carefully because you don't want to brown your butter! Remove from oven just as soon as butter is liquefied.

In a medium bowl, mix together all of your ingredients thoroughly. Tip: if you're choosing to make small cups, I suggest you pouring the mixed batter into something with a spout because it can get a little messy. Also important: only fill cups half way with batter!

After pouring batter in pan(s), bake on the center rack in preheated oven for 30-40 minutes. For cups, approx 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

My favorite serving suggestions-

Savory:
- Wild-caught smoked salmon with organic goat cream cheese. To get the piped appearance, I used softened cream cheese and a ziplock bag with the corner clipped. This tastes awesome alone or I've added fresh dill, capers, and sliced cherry tomato....it's also really pretty dressed up a little (picture shown above).
- Guacamole with a halved or quartered cherry tomato (shown below).
- Great brunch option the day after Thanksgiving. Take advantage of leftovers and fill with roasted turkey and cranberry dressing.

Sweet:
- Fruit of all kinds! Sauteed, compotes, fresh!
- Cashew cream mixed with berries and stevia makes a lovely filling (shown below).
- I also recently sauteed a bag of organic berries in a pan and added approx. 1 1/2 cups of water, a little bit of Frontier vanilla flavoring, some stevia, and kept adding the chia seed until it thickened into a berry jam, while continuing to cook on a low simmer. Not only did this taste awesome warm, but after I stored it in a jar in the fridge overnight, I could eat it alone with a spoon! So satisfying.

You may be thinking, "that is a lot of butter!" and yes, it is. As you will see below, if you don't add that much butter, the pancake won't rise and curl into the right shape. It still tastes awesome when you omit some of the butter, but you won't get the bowl/cup-like appearance. It will be a little more dense and flat, as you can see seen in some of the pictures!

The image above was made using all of the batter in one pan with all of the suggested butter. The image on the right is what is looks like if you cut the butter in half. It's a much more dense/ flat outcome, but, again, still delicious!