German Pancakes

One of my cheapskate codes of conduct is that if someone offers you a food that you do not hate (and that is healthy), and asks if you can use it, you say, "Yes." Even if using it will require a little bit of effort or creativity. Such a thing happened several weeks ago when a friend who has chickens brought by no less than 4 dozen eggs right after I had just bought 2 dozen eggs and one of our ducks had decided to start laying. "Can you use them?" she asked.

"I'm sure I can," I said.

But as the days went by I wasn't making my way through them very fast. Six dozen eggs plus a few duck ones called for a few drastic measures. I made this egg bake and these waffles (doubled). I made crepes. Also, I remembered this recipe for German pancakes (sometimes called Dutch Babies) that my sisters had introduced me to. It was easy enough to assign to a 7-year-old (minus a certain hot butter step), used half a dozen eggs, tasted good, and could be eaten with savory or sweet toppings. Also, it puffs up in this groovy kind of way. Perfect.

My kids were a little skeptical, but when I told them they could sprinkle a bit of powdered sugar on it, they agreed (oh, how gracious of them) to give it a try.

German Pancakes
makes 1 8x8 inch pan, thick OR 1 9x13 inch pan, thin (we opted, sort of accidentally for the 8x8)
Prep time: 3 minutes
Cook time: 15 minutes
Cost: $1.35
eggs: .60, flour: .10, milk: .15, butter: .50

1/8-1/4 C butter (you'll use 1/8 in a 8x8 inch and 1/4 in a 9x13 inch)
1 C flour
1 C milk
6 eggs

Heat oven to 450 and set rack in middle. As it heats, put butter in pan and stick that pan int he oven so the butter melts.

In the meantime, mix eggs, milk, and flour until mostly non-lumpy (mine always retains a few lumps and they are never noticeable in the finished product).

Take out your pan of butter, wait for the oven to finish heating, and then dump (careful not to splash the butter) your batter in and put it into the 450 degree oven. (Note: The butter won't all stay on the bottom; some will swish around and even get on the top of your German pancakes. Not a problem.)

Bake for 15 minutes or until eggs are at least 160 degrees and preferably a little hotter (they'll be firm when a fork is inserted and just beginning to brown at the edges).

Remove and top as you like. You can use sweet things (my favorite one is powdered sugar with a sprinkle of lemon juice) or savory ones (roasted tomatoes anyone?).

Note: These stay hot for a while so don't chomp right in and burn your mouth. I think the butter keeps them extra hot for a little longer than you'd expect, especially if you made the thick ones.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Best White Cake

(Wait a second, you charlatan, that's the cake you just posted and it was chocolate. Okay, you caught me. The thing is: When you have a house full of 7 children, thinking about taking pictures just doesn't rank very high in brain function. And then, before you know it, the cake is gone.)

Since we're talking about cake and all, let me tell you about this incredible one we made several weeks ago. It. wasn't. chocolate. I know, you've hit the floor. Your relatives are calling 911 as we speak. Well, get up because if you die of cardiac arrest, you want to die after you eat this cake.

As you know, chocolate is definitely the cake of choice around here. Partly because Kip loves it with his whole soul and part of my stay-thin plan is to have him eat the majority of the sweets I make (Does this make me a bad person? Yes. But it's a variety of bad personness that Kip rather enjoys. Which is no excuse. But still.) Also, I've spent a lot of time (probably more time than a person should be proud of) finding some perfect chocolate cake recipes and perfecting my chocolate cake skills. And, while the white and yellow cakes I've tried have come out fine, they just haven't been good enough to sing about. Nevertheless, a couple of weeks ago, my sister and nephews were visiting. Apparently, they didn't get the memo about chocolate cake being the only cake and my nephew Noah requested, gasp, a white cake. A white cake dyed in a rainbow of colors, mind you, but a white cake at heart nevertheless. What was I to do?

Fortunately my sister-in-law had sent me a recommendation for a killer white cake months ago. I'd been needing a reason to make it and here that reason stood in cute little blond-headed form.

Now I have to tell you that if my cake goddess sister-in-law hadn't recommended it, there's no way I would have picked this cake out of a line up. Why? The ingredients are posted kind of weird and the instructions are whacked. Still, I have to give the person who posted this credit. Because it's awesome. Not to toot my own horn or anything (toot toot), but it'll be even more awesome with the instructions below. (P.S. After writing this boast, I nearly forgot to list the sugar; don't worry; I caught it; whew.)


Best White Cake
adapted from food
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Cost: $1.85
eggs: .50, milk: .15, flour: .30, butter: .85, other stuff: .05

Note: You're going to have egg yolks on hand after this. Make yourself a lovely pudding. Or some ice cream. Of just add them to some regular eggs for a rich omelette.

5 egg whites
1 C buttermilk (or 1 scant cup milk mixed with 1 Tbsp white vinegar)
2 tsp baking soda
2 1/4 tsp vanilla
3 C cake flour (which I did use, although my sis-in-law says all purpose works too)
2 C sugar
4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
12 Tbsp unsalted butter, very soft (if using salted, omit some or all of salt)
1 C boiling water
food coloring if your nephew is requesting a rainbow

Preheat oven to 350. Take 2 9-inch pans, grease them, line them with wax paper, and grease them again.

In small bowl combine buttermilk (or milk and vinegar) and baking soda.

In medium bowl whisk together egg white, 1/4 C of the milk mixture, and the vanilla. (Just whisk it until it comes together; you're not going for a lot of air in the whites or anything.)

In large bowl, combine remaining dry ingredients (including the sugar). Add the butter and the remaining 3/4 C milk mixture. Mix on low until moistened and then increase the mixing speed to medium and beat until well incorporated.

Gradually add the egg mixture, mixing to incorporate. (We kind of did this in batches. We added 1/3 of the mixture, then beat, then another 1/3, beat, then the last 1/3, and beat.) Scrape down the sides as you do this.

Add the boiling water and beat until everything is incorporated. It's going to be runny and you might feel nervous. Don't feel nervous. It'll be great.

Add food coloring if using. We poured our batter into the pans and then just gently swirled to get a green and a blue layer.

Bake 15-20 minutes. It should be taken out when you stick a fork in and it comes out with a few moist crumbs and is just barely starting to pull away from the edge (just barely). (Note: The original recipe said 35 minutes. I don't know what it is about cake recipes. I feel like many of them have you bake your cake until it's 2 days old. Maybe it's my oven, but I'm pretty sure it bakes at the correct temperature. Anyway, we checked ours at 20 minutes and it was definitely done, but if yours takes longer, don't despair.)

PRINTABLE RECIPE

'S' Is for Awesssome: A Cake Decorating Idea

Savannah is my best helper chef. Thus, it seems fitting that she be the one to set birthday trends around here. Last year, she started the four-layer rainbow cake thing (every birthday kid after that also requested this cake). This year, we took it to a whole new level with the teeny tiny flower rainbow-colored cake.

The good news about this cake is that it's easy. If, by easy, you mean 'does not require much skill or artistic gifting.' However, if by easy you mean 'takes 15 minutes,' you will have to look elsewhere. Because I'm not going to lie, the tiny flower creating took about an hour to do. On the one hand, it was kind of meditative. On the other hand it made my hand hurt. On the hand you don't have because you already used two, there was that frustrating moment near the end when Emma swiped her fingers down one side of tiny flower-dots and promptly shoved that hand in her mouth before I could cart her off to her room.

I found the idea for this on Pinterest. There's really no skill necessary, but you do need a frosting bag, a coupler, and the tip that makes the little flowers. If you're doing multiple colors, multiple bags and couplers would be nice so you can just put your colors into bags and then move your tip around. Here are some ideas.


(Don't expect a flower like that unless you're good. I just squirt some frosting out and mash it and it makes a sort of flower-dot/blob like you see in these pictures.


Or you could use one like the top one in this set. I think that's the kind that was used in the Pinterest picture. It should also give a bigger flower and that would save some time and hand cramping.


I use disposable bags because it keeps me off the crazy farm.


And these are couplers. They're the little white things that make it so your tip stays on your bag.

To create this cake, all you do is make the flower dots in one color all over the cake, but not touching. Then add another color and another and try to keep the same colors from touching. Like this:

pink

Then blue.

Then green. 

Then yellow.

And purple

And dark blue

A couple of tips:
1. You'll notice that I pre-frosted the cake with a thin layer of colored frosting. This is a good idea because if you run out of steam or time or frosting, the cake still looks really really good.
2. When you start with a color, put the flower-dots closer together than you think you should. Otherwise, you'll be mixing more colors near the end in order to fill up holes. This cake, for example, was supposed to only have 4 colors. It wound up with 6 because there were places that needed to be filled with a new and exciting color so that none of the same colors (heaven forbid) touched each other. Whew.

I made this 3-layer cake and frosted it with a recipe and a half of this vanilla frosting.