Cooking: Oven Pancakes, yummy for adults and kids

In our family we are big on breakfast foods as great anytime meals, especially my husband whose top picks for lunch or dinner always seem to be; rice pudding, pancakes, or waffles. Another fun and *fast* food to make is oven pancakes. Now you may have heard of these as German pancakes or German oven pancakes but I'm just going to let you know now that they most definitely aren't German. Most Germans wouldn't even know what you were talking about. The most likely countries of origin are either Finland or Holland.

But back to the subject at hand- they are simple, fast, and relatively healthy.

All you need are:
a few tablespoons sugar (how much is up to you, I normally do 2-3 tbsps)
a bit of cinnamon ( once again depends on your taste preference I normally do a few good shakes)
vanilla (I have powdered vanilla bean but vanilla extract would be OK too)
A bit of butter to coat the pan
a pan (I use a glass pie crust)
3 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup flour
Whatever you want to use as a topping- here your choices are really open. Apples and applesauce, berries, powdered sugar, syrup,etc.

That is it!
To make you heat the oven to 425 degrees, and put the butter in the pan you don't need to try and coat the pan yet as you are going to toss it in the oven for a few minutes to help the butter melt.

Then you take out a blender or a mixer and put your eggs and milk in, if you are doing a liquid form of vanilla you add a few drops of that as well. You blend it until well mixed and then add the flour and blend again until completely mixed with no lumps.

Then you mix your sugar and cinnamon together in a separate bowl (adding maybe a tsp or 2 of vanilla if you use a powdered form)

Take the pan out of the oven, spread the butter so it coats everything, pour in the egg mixture, shake the sugar mixture on top (only use as much as you need the rest can be used later or if you decide to make a homemade fruit compote or sauce), and that was it! Toss it in the oven for 20-25 minutes and you are done!

What I like about this is how quickly you can make it and how it is such a good kid and adult meal. It is soft, so even if you are still at the stage where your child has no teeth they can gum it fine. Plus if you have the time you can make a yummy homemade apple sauce to go with it. At the same time it is definitely an enjoyable meal for an adult especially if you add some nice touches like fresh berries or a homemade compote.

The recipe as I have described here is enough for either 2 adults or one adult and 1 child. It wouldn't be enough for a family of 3 unless you increased it, or made it a side and not the main meal.