How to Make Apple Dutch Baby Pancakes

Baking with apples is always delicious and fun, but pies, tarts, and cakes can often be a little more time consuming than we want. So what are we to do with an extra apple and a craving for carbs? Enter the dutch baby pancake, an extremely buttery, and endlessly customizable dessert that comes together in 20 minutes.The batter is deceptively simple – just eggs, milk, flour, and spices – but when it’s poured into a pan with bubbling butter and then baked for fifteen minutes it puffs and browns and turns into something absolutely gorgeous and special.

This is the perfect recipe for those “sugar and butter now” cravings, or when your brunch spread needs extra carbs (extra carbs at brunch is never bad). Oh, and it has apples, so it’s… kind of healthy. This recipe should be made with slightly sweet cooking apples that will hold their shape when cooked, such as Pink Ladies, Honeycrisps, and Golden Delicious apples.

Apple Dutch Baby Pancake

• Step 1

  Heat the oven to 450°F and cut the apple into thin slices.

• Step 2

  Whisk the eggs until foamy. Add in milk, flour, spices, and sugar, and whisk to combine. Small lumps of flour are fine, as in a pancake batter.

• Step 3

  Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a 10 inch ovenproof skillet (a slightly smaller skillet is fine). Put the apple slices into the skillet and cook them until soft and a little browned, about 4 minutes. Turn the slices with a fork so that they don’t stick to the pan.

• Step 4

  Put the remaining butter in the pan, and let it melt, while still turning the apple slices. When the butter becomes bubbly, give the apples one last stir and pour in the batter and smooth it out a little. Immediately transfer the pan to the hot oven.

• Step 5

  Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, until the pancake is very puffy and golden brown on top. Remove from the oven, transfer to a plate, and sprinkle liberally with powdered sugar.