Dutch Baby

I’m not sure exactly when it dawned on me, but I know it was sometime in the last couple of years...a dutch baby is just a giant, slightly sweet Yorkshire pudding. Have you ever met anyone who doesn’t like Yorkshire pudding or Dutch babies? I haven’t. I love the way they have soft bits and crispy bits, the way they puff up sky high in the oven and even the way they begin to fall in on themselves as they cool.  The way they are eggy but not too eggy and chewy but not too chewy. Did you know that they couldn’t be easier to make? Whoever came up with them was a genius.  

I promised the kids a special “Birthday Breakfast” in advance of their joint birthday party last weekend.  Because I knew it would be hard enough to get everyone out the door in time to pick up the cake and be there when our guests started to arrive, I decided to do the easiest thing possible and make a big, family-sized dutch baby. I made the batter the night before so that once we woke up it was just a matter of turning the oven on, preheating the pan and pouring in the batter.  

I implore you to try this at home.

Seriously.

Emmett loved watching it rise in the oven. Science at its best.  After about 15 minutes, our Dutch baby was ready.  I sprinkled it with powdered sugar, tore a piece off for each plate and let everyone apply their own toppings.  Yogurt, berries, almonds and maple syrup for me, mini m&m’s, marshmallows and yogurt chips for the littles. Even baby Eve was able to partake (I love that she’s getting to the age where she can eat table food).

To make the batter for these I simply used this Yorkshire pudding recipe and added a tablespoon of sugar, 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract and a big pinch of cinnamon.  Alternatively, you could add sugar, vanilla and cinnamon to a box of Yorkshire pudding mix (available at the Irish Boutique).  

To make a 12-inch Dutch baby I followed this process:

Place a 12” cast iron pan in oven. Preheat oven to 450F.

Once it is hot, remove pan and put 2 tablespoons of butter in the pan.  

Put the pan back in the oven for a couple of minutes until butter has melted.  

Remove pan from oven and swirl butter in the pan to coat the bottom of the pan evenly.

Pour your batter in the pan and turn the oven down to 425F.

Cook for 15 minutes or until Dutch baby is cooked through but still soft in the center and puffy all over. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve.

It was hard to explain the term Dutch baby to Emmett so I told him it was called “Puffy Pancake”. That made a lot more sense. 

Two scoops in Every Batch: Raisin Bran Muffins

It’s funny how types of food, like people, can have stereotypes attached to them.  In America, it seems like whole grain flour and wheat bran are given a bad rap because of their (unfair) association with “bad-tasting health food”. Yet the Irish seem to embrace these products, with traditional baked goods like brown bread and oat cakes relying primarily on whole grain flours for taste and texture.

Odlums, an Irish flour milling and packaging company, originally established in Portlaoise by the Odlum family (in 1845!) has a whole range of flours, most of them whole grain (wholemeal). Odlums makes wholemeal self-raising flour, organic wholemeal flour, coarse wholemeal flour, extra coarse wholemeal flour and strong wholemeal flour to name just a few. It reminds me of the way Eskimos have so many words for snow. Like "aqilokoq" for "softly falling snow" and "piegnartoq" for "snow that is good for driving a sled".  

Sweet Ireland, the land of baked goods where so many varieties of flour get their due. How refreshing.

Recently, I saw an article entitled how to make Old-School Bran Muffins from Scratch online and, as a lover of whole grains and bran, I knew I had to make them.  I was sure they would be delicious but I needed to “spin this” so that I could describe them to my family as something other than whole wheat, bran or healthy. Any of those terms would be bound to conjure up images of dry, hockey-puck style muffins in Paul’s mind and through osmosis, in the minds of our children (and by “osmosis” I mean that if Paul isn't waiting by the oven door ready to pounce on any fresh baked goods that may emerge, the kids know there's something wrong).

Then it came to me...RAISIN BRAN! Everyone loves Raisin Bran.  Have you ever seen the amount of sugar sticking to those raisins? As if the raisins themselves were not basically pure sugar.  Sugar dipped in sugar. No matter. This was just marketing. The mere association with Raisin Bran would make them forget all about the whole wheat and surprisingly, even the bran. It seemed to work. We each ate one fresh out of the oven (they were delicious) and I froze the rest. The next day after school, when I turned my back on Emmett and Isla for an instant to unbuckle Eve from her carseat,  I turned back to find them each eating a muffin - straight out of the freezer! They were all smiles, even more so when I warmed up their muffins and slathered them with butter.

My deep thinker, contemplating...muffin.

You can find the recipe for Raisin Bran Muffins here. I was one tablespoon short of butter so I replaced it with a tablespoon of coconut oil.  Otherwise I didn’t change a thing. And of course, I used Odlums Coarse Wholemeal Flour for the whole wheat flour called for in the recipe.  Odlums flour can be found at the Irish Boutique.  

Saturdays: Breakfast for Dinner

Saturdays are sort of a free-for-all around here.  Some Saturdays we are all about cooking, cleaning and getting other housework done, some are packed with activities and socializing and some are just plain slow and lazy.  If we aren’t having anyone over for dinner, Saturday’s evening meal can be a free-for-all as well.  Soup, leftovers and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches come to mind.  We aren’t a big breakfast-for-dinner family but on weekends anything goes. This weekend we had some sausages, courtesy of the Boutique, in the fridge and not much else. We added some eggs, beans, toast with butter and Vegemite for me and rice for Paul and made it a meal.  It made me wonder why we don’t do breakfast for dinner more often.  

I'm so thankful that I always have sausages in my freezer and beans in my cupboard.  Have you been by the Boutique lately? They've got a new freezer and its stocked with all of the good stuff. Brown bread, soda bread, sausages, black pudding, sausage rolls and so much more.