Cinnamon Apple Pancake Bars

For over a week I have been wanting to make these pancake bars I saw on the Kitchn website. I thought it would be quite handy to have a grab and go breakfast. And yet all week the time to make these morsels alluded me.

Finally, today as I was whipping up some homemade chicken stock and found myself with a baby-holder I was able to make these. These take no time at all to pull together but they do take a while to bake.  The recipe said 12-15 minutes but this took 25 for me. Perhaps it was the dark pan or my overly runny batter but it was sort of a long wait when we were hungry and waiting--so plan ahead!

These are good cold but I bet they'd be great heated up too.

I revised the recipe so that the main batter had some more flavor but don't skip the streusel topping, it makes it.

For the Bars:
2 cups flour
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 t kosher salt
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
dash of ginger
3 T sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 3/4 cups whole milk (this seemed like too much)
1 t vanilla
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 apple, diced into 1/2" pieces (or bigger depending on how chunky you want)
2 C granola (I used Bare Naked Maple Pecan, you can't really taste it though)

For the Topping: (consider making a double recipe of the topping!)
1/4 C flour
1/4 C brown sugar, firmly packed
3 T butter, melted
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg

Directions:
1. Mix all the dry ingredients through sugar in a large bowl.  Add eggs, milk and butter and mix until just combined. Add apple and granola and mix until just covered.  The batter for me was really runny with chunks in it but it still worked out!
2. Prepare a 9x13 pan by spraying with cooking spray. Add a layer of parchment, spray again. Pour prepared batter into the pan. Then heat the oven to 400 degrees and let the batter rest.
3. Make the topping by stirring it all together, it will be thick. Spatter the topping all over the bars. Bale 20-25 minutes until the bars are cooked through and are springy to touch.  Remove from pan, let rest on a wire rack and serve.  I cut these into small bars.

Apple Dutch Baby

For weeks I have been craving a dutch baby pancake. The crazy thing is that I'm not sure I've ever had a dutch baby before. It's just that one of my favorite bloggers posted one months ago (a year?!) and I've been thinking of it ever since.

Then, pouring salt in my wounds, my sister-in-law described a dutch baby she made just two weeks ago! I knew it was fate and I must make this pancake.  As luck would have it, we went apple picking yesterday so I have a plethora of apples in which to use for this.

The other lucky thing is that the dutch baby doesn't call for anything special, just eggs, flour, sugar, milk--no fancy buttermilk, no special sugars, not too hard, ready quickly.  A perfect breakfast!

The only thing I changed from this recipe of Spinach Tiger was using Penskey's Baking spice instead of cinnamon.  Why ruin something simple with more spices than just cinnamon you ask? Well...we're out of cinnamon, obviously we have to fix that situation before we do any more with our apples but on this early morning I wasn't about to go to the store first!  I'm glad to report that the baking spice was also delicious and the warming smells of baked apples filled the house as expected.

The results were a bit eggy--custardy but eggy. I think this means I maybe should havve cooked it a bit more but then again, it was golden...the best part was the caramelized edges and I think I could have thrown in one more apple at the beginning.

Recipe from Spinach Tiger

Ingredients:
2 apples
4 T butter
2 t baking spice or cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
4 eggs
1 C flour
1 C milk
1/4 C brown sugar
1 t vanilla
Powdered sugar for serving

Apple Dutch Baby
1. Preheat the oven to 450
2. Peel and thinly slice two apples
3. In an oven-proof frying pan melt 4 T butter (woah) over medium heat
4. Add cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar. Melt and Add apples.
5. Saute 5 minutes or until apples are soft
6. Stash the pan in the oven until the batter is ready
7. Stir together eggs & flour until smooth. Add milk & vanilla. The mixture will be very runny.
8. Remove frying pan from the oven, pour batter on top of the apples, place back in the oven and bake 15-20 minutes until golden brown
9. Sprinkle with some powdered sugar and serve

Apple Pancakes

In the October Foodzie Tasting Box I got two small jars of Maple Syrup from Ben's Sugar Shack. We were supposed to get one jar of Grade A & a second of Grade B but we actually got two Grade B's. Either way, I decided to get up early and make breakfast this Saturday morning before Joey went to work so that we could try out the new syrup!

I'm not really a superb breakfast maker, but I can do it in a pinch. The problem for me is that I don't really like the thick heavy bisquick pancakes. I like buttermilk ones that are light and fluffy. But, keeping buttermilk around the house is annoying and I'm still weirded out by the lemon juice & milk method--so I am always looking for new recipes.

Apple Cinnamon pancakes sounded really good to me since I am currently obsessed with this Baking Spice from Penzey's spices that my friend Jenny gave me a few years ago for a gift. So I started to search the web and then I just decided to search Smitten Kitchen and I found just what I was looking for--pancakes with bits of apple in them!

Per her instructions, I added a little extra flavoring to the mix--a little vanilla, a teaspoon of baking spice, a half teaspoon of cinnamon. I think the result was really delicious. I recommend this recipe from Smitten Kitchen!

When I was grinding up the apples in my food processor, I didn't manage to eliminate all the big chunks so as I was making pancakes, I found a few slices of apple doused in batter. I threw those in the griddle too and the result was nothing short of amazing. These apple slices had just a bit of custardy batter on them that browned up--with the cinnamon and still a little crunch and juice from the apple--I think pancake battered apples could be the next new thing.

Breakfast for Dinner

I'll admit it, I'm not the biggest breakfast fan. I don't really like cereal, I'm not a fan of eggs in the morning, and I prefer my bread un-toasted. The other problem is that I'm not usually hungry for breakfast until 10am and by then I might as well just wait for lunch where I can get something delicious. If I had to list my top 5 favorite breakfast foods thought they would be:

1. Lox & Bagels with all the trimmings

2. Bacon

3. Pancakes

4. Waffles

5. Huevos Rancheros

Yesterday, when I was browsing through my 45 favorite food blogs, I saw this recipe for pancakes. The recipe was from the Winnie the Pooh cookbook. Honestly, they are just regular old pancakes. The thing is though that the blogger or Pooh or someone decided to add berries on top--kind of like a syrup or lingonberry replacement--and probably better for you too. I thought that the fruit added the best element ever to the pancakes. Normally I can only eat one and maybe two at the most of pancakes. Today I powered through 5! All thanks to the berries and breakfast at 7pm.

Dinner consisted of:

3 slices bacon per person

Mostly egg whites, scrambled (we made a few recipes that called for yolks only, so we had a lot of whites and one yolk leftover)

Pancakes with berry 'syrup' (this was made by defrosting frozen mixed berries with a dash of water and a tiny bit of sugar)

Recipe makes about 8-10 1/4 C sized pancakes.

German Apple Pancake

This month's cooking light came in the mail and made my mouth water at first glance. On the cover was a German Apple Pancake, and "light" to boot! I immediately bought the ingredients to make it. And then I didn't. But yesterday, I woke up unusually early, and decided it was time.

So, I bought the ingredients but I refuse to buy things that I can only use for the one recipe. This recipe, in an effort to make it "light" I guess, called for egg substitute. I bought regular eggs--I planned to use the remaining eggs in an ice cream recipe. The problem that I ran into was my failure to look up how many eggs = 1 cup of egg substitute. Well actually, I did look it up, but then I didn't follow the directions based on what I learned. I learned that 1/4 cup of egg substitute equals 1 egg. Then I continued to use only 2 eggs. I'm not sure what was going through my head except for maybe "4 eggs is a whole lot of eggs." So I used 2. This caused my German pancake to be really thin and not quite as custardy as promised. However, it was still delicious and I would make it again in second (and I would likely try it with 4 eggs).

Recipe below found in the Cooking Light August 2008 as well as online here.

Ingredients

Batter:
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup egg substitute (or 4 eggs)
1 cup milk (low-fat if you want to be 'healthy')
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Apple mixture:
Cooking spray
1/2 cup granulated sugar, divided
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup thinly sliced Granny Smith apple

Remaining ingredient:
1 tablespoon powdered sugar

Directions:
1. Mix together the dry batter ingredients in a large bowl using a whisk. In a separate bowl mix together the wet ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir with a whisk until just combined. Let sit 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, spray ovenproof pan with cooking spray on the bottom and the sides. Mix together 1/4 sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg in a small bowl. Sprinkle sugar mixture over the sides and bottom of prepared pan. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

3. Slice apples into thin slices and place in a windmill single layer over the sugar mixture. Sprinkle remaining 1/4 of sugar over the apples. Heat over medium heat until mixture bubbles (they say 8 minutes, I say 4-5). Remove from heat and pour the batter over the top.

4. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 375 for 13 minutes more (don't take the pancake out). Remove pan from oven and transfer to plate (or just cut it from the pan). Sprinkle powdered sugar over the top and enjoy.

I think this pancake could be used for dessert but I enjoyed it for breakfast. I realize it has apples in it, but I think it would be delicious served with some fresh raspberries.