My Oma started making palatschinken for my sister and I as a “special breakfast.” As we became older (and bolder), we started begging her to make them during all times of the day. The last time I had palatschinken was just at 3 pm.
These are better than crepes and pancakes, and they’re rolled, so they’ll still look pretty even after you butcher flip them in the skillet. Good luck!
Palatschinken
Ingredients
Instructions
Get out all of your ingredients along with a large mixing bowl and whisk.
Pour 1 cup of half and half into the large mixing bowl. If you want to be fancy (or if you don’t have any), you can make your own half and half using 1/2 cup of whole milk and 1/2 cup of heavy cream.
#SpoonTip: If you don’t want to do this, you can also just use 1 cup of whole milk.
Whisk the 3 eggs into the half and half until the mixture is a pale yellow color.
Continuing to whisk, add in 1/3 cup of club soda.
#SpoonTip: To make opened club soda more fizzy, give it a few shakes.
Using a sifter, sift the 7/8 cups of flour into the egg mixture. Only sift a little at a time and try not to get flour everywhere.
SpoonTip: if you don’t have a sifter, you can also u0022whisku0022 your flour using a fork in a separate bowl. This will get some of the clumps out, making your batter smoother.
After you’ve sifted about half of the flour, stir the mixture until smooth. Sift the other half, and stir again.
Once your batter is smooth, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla and a pinch of salt.
After stirring in the vanilla, add 3 tablespoons of sugar. Depending on how much sweetness you like, add more or less sugar.
Now comes the hard part: cooking the palatschinken. Using a large skillet, melt ~1/3 tablespoon (1 teaspoon) of butter on high heat. When the butter is fully melted, ladle in enough batter to cover the center of the skillet.
Using the back of the ladle, smooth out the batter into a thin circle. You can also tilt your pan to move the batter around.
Once the batter in the center of the pancake is no longer runny and/or the other side of the pancake is golden-brown, you can flip it over. When the newly-flipped side is also golden-brown, the pancake is finished.
Your first few pancakes will be very ugly. They might be a little broken from the flip…
Or they might be too thick…
But once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to produce some crispy, golden-brown, round, and delicate palatschinken. The good thing is that it doesn’t really matter since they’re all getting stuffed with jam and rolled.
#SpoonTip: If you have a friend helping you cook, she can jam/roll the pancakes while you cook. If not, you can keep the pancakes warm by placing them in a pan in the oven heated at 200˚F.
Traditionally, these are stuffed with apricot jam, but raspberry works well, too. Spread 1-2 teaspoons of jam on the top third of the pancake.
Using your fingers, delicately roll the pancake.
Keep this up, until all of the pancakes are stuffed and rolled.
If you’re not planning on serving them immediately, place the rolled pancakes in the heated oven. If you’re ready to eat, dust with powdered sugar and enjoy!