Puffed Apple Pancake

Autumn. My favorite season. The heat of summer is gone and the wonderful cool weather is here. Autumn also means pumpkin farms, apple orchards, halloween, the smell of campfires and burning leaves (oh that smell...), driving just for the heck of it and hiking through the colored forests and feeding the ducks. :)

Well a cool day a couple of weekends ago I had a ton of apples from my mom who went to the orchard the day before. I didn't want to make an apple pie (too predictable and boring). So I scoured the internet and found this wonderful recipe for an apple puffed pancake. If you've never made a puffed pancake, its something to see. It rises super high in the oven and deflates while it cools. The texture of the pancake is smooth like a crepe but its thick like a regular pancake. The taste of this particular recipe goes soooo well on a cool autumn day. It makes for a great weekend breakfast or would go great with a holiday meal!

Puffed Apple Pancake
recipe found in the September 2002 Bon Appetit

1 cup whole milk
4 large eggs
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2/3 cup all purpose flour
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
2-3 Golden Delicious or Granny Smith Apples, peeled, cored, thinly sliced

3 tablespoons brown sugar
Powdered sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 425°F. Whisk milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, salt, and cinnamon in large bowl until well blended. Add flour and whisk until batter is smooth. Place butter in a glass pie dish. Place dish in oven until butter melts, about 5 minutes. Remove dish from oven. Place apple slices in overlapping rows atop melted butter in baking dish. Return to oven and bake until apples begin to soften slightly and butter is bubbling and beginning to brown around edges of dish, about 10 minutes.

Pour batter over apples in dish and sprinkle with brown sugar. Bake pancake until puffed and brown, about 20 minutes. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, if desired. Serve warm.

Makes 4 servings