Healthier German Apple Pancakes

Last night I did some bad tossing and turning so I woke up like a bear out of a cave (in other words, I needed some serious grub). Pancakes, bacon and scrambled eggs smothered in maple syrup? Sounded awfully good. So I got to work (did I ever tell you about my butler fantasies?)

My go-to German apple pancake recipe comes from Marcia Adams's Cooking From Quilt Country. Now Marcia's recipes feed armies so I tend to halve them. When I opened the page for the pancake recipe, lo and behold, I found a piece of paper with old notes I'd scribbled for halving the recipe! Great! So I put on my apron and got to work. A quarter cup of flour, a quarter cup of whole wheat flour (apparently, the last time I did this, I wanted a healthy version, thus the whole wheat — well, I didn't have whole wheat but I did have oat bran, so I used that), 1 tablespoon of sugar, 3/4 teaspoon of baking powder (yeah! get to use the homemade one), 3/4 teaspoon of baking soda, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, 1 egg, and — this is when I realized something was wrong. Where's the milk? You need milk for pancakes. So I compared the original recipe to my notes. Hmmm. Some serious discrepancies. Like the original didn't call for baking powder or baking soda. And it had all sorts of goodies like nutmeg and vanilla. And apples. Whoops. Wrong notes.

Well, by this time I had pretty much everything all nicely mixed up in my reliable quart-sized Pyrex measuring cup. So I just threw in the milk and spices. I figured it was all good. And it was. I especially liked the addition of the oat bran. It made the batter much more flavorful and gave the pancakes a beautiful brown color.

Making the pancakes is really easy. So much preferable than doing little ones on the skillet. I don't follow Marcia's directions completely. Instead of precooking the apples, I just do it all in the oven like this. Preheat the oven to 470 degrees. Get a really good skillet (cast iron is best but I have an ancient Cuisinart that has stainless steel sandwiched in the aluminum). Put about a tablespoon of butter in it. Cut up a smallish apple very thinly. Put it in the skillet with the butter. Put the skillet in the oven, letting the apples cook while the oven is preheating. About five minutes into it, stir the apples around so each piece gets a nice coating of melted butter.

Meanwhile, mix everything for the batter. When the oven finally preheats, the skillet should be pretty darn hot. Pour the batter over the apples. Put the skillet into the oven. Now, at this point, you can follow Marcia and turn the oven down to 350 degrees. Today, I was too busy with the scrambled eggs and bacon so I forgot. But in ten minutes, I got the crispiest, nicest pancake! I'd definitely give this dish an A.

BTW, if you live in LA, go to Huntington Meats at the Farmer's Market for your bacon. They have the best apple-smoked bacon, thick, meaty slices that are so much better than Niman Ranch. Try to get the older gentlemen to help you. The younger ones so aren't into service. And they don't really know that much. Huntington also sells Moffat's chicken pot pies. Seriously good.