Baked Pancake with Summer Fruits

Whenever I'm out for brunch, I fall victim to the same impossible decision-making process: sweet or savory?  Typically, I'll end up getting one or the other and totally regretting my decision a couple of bites in, as I enviously eye fellow brunchers' delicious meals.  Luckily, some places combine sweet and savory (e.g., sausage wrapped up in a pancake, smothered in cinnamon apple goodness?  Yes, that's a real.thing.), so the decision isn't as difficult.  It's hard to think about these huge decisions at 11 am on a Sunday.  This, friends, is a true fact.  I tend to even dabble a bit onto the lunch menu, asking for a side of mac and cheese with my short stack of blueberry pancakes.  Don't knock it until you try it.

Last weekend (yes, I'm behind), I wanted to make a deliciously sweet and fruity breakfast.  I thumbed through a beautiful cookbook and found just what my belly wanted.  A massive pancake you bake!  Yes, please.  The original recipe (found in The Farm Chicks in the Kitchen's book) makes this with apples, but I had fresh peaches and way too many strawberries, so I decided to adapt the recipe to incorporate these light, juicy, summer fruits.

Ingredients.

Looks like summer!

This is a three-step process of baking, but super-easy.  This is after Step 2 of the baking process.

Ugly but yummy.

Perfect drizzled with a little maple syrup.

 So, it turns out, our current oven is a little tempermental.  The pancake is only supposed to bake for about 20 minutes, but it didn't set!  After I realized that the oven wasn't as hot as it should be, I reset the oven, and it was completely fine.  The end product, however, was an ugly pancake.  Sorry!  I'm pretty sure that it would have been a lot more pretty had it been in the oven for the 20 minutes, at the right temp all along.

Are you interested in making this?  I sure hope so!  Here's the recipe, again, adapted from The Farm Chicks in the Kitchen:

What you'll need-

A 9-inch glass pie plate (I used a ceramic pie plate and it was fine) 
Blender or food processor
1/4 c unsalted butter
1/4 c packed brown sugar
1 t ground cinnamon
approx. 1 c fruit (sliced/diced if big)
5 large eggs
1/2 c milk
1/2 c all-purpose flour
pinch of salk
maple syrup

How-to-

1.  Heat oven to 425F.
2.  While preheating the oven, place the butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon in the glass pie plate.  Stick the pie plate in the oven until the butter is nice and bubbly (5-7 mins).  Then, remove from oven.
3.  Stir in your fruit slices, mix well.  Return to oven for another 2-3 mins.
4.  In your blender or food processor, mix eggs, milk. flour, and salt until these ingredients are frothy, but don't overmix (1 min).
5.  Take out your pie plate from the oven, pour the blended egg mixture into the pie plate, and bake until the pancake is puffy and set (approx. 20 mins).
6.  Serve it up with some syrup, and enjoy!

Raspberries + Cream Cheese + Cinnamon + Walnuts = yes.

I've been fantasizing about making cinnamon rolls, ever since winter. True story-- but I was too busy in the winter, with all the grad school stuff they throw at you (dear higher education, you're a bully!), and then I was too bogged down in the spring, with all the school stuff + vacuuming up all the dog hair that emerged out of nowhere (well, i guess it all emerged from my dog... mystery, solved). So, that leads us to right now, mid-summer, for me to make these labor-intensive (but totally worth it) breakfast (and dinner) treats! Yes, I had to crank the AC up to offset the heat from the oven, but man-- my belly (and the husband's as well) gives me a hi-five for that completely un-economical decision to use an oven during a midwest summer.



Speaking of summer, berries are EVERYWHERE, and since there was a crazy sale on raspberries at the chain grocery store, i caved and bought 4 cartons (i know, i know-- i totally should only buy produce from local stores like the co-op, where we're actually members... or the farmer's market... i'm sorry!). What was I going to do with that many raspberries?! I ate them by the fistfuls, forced them onto Jarrod and Juni, and threw them into salads. Then, I thought about my favorite summer camp sandwich from way back when... cream cheese and jelly. And then it dawned on me. The cinnamon roll recipe I had in front of me folded in cream cheese into the dough (thanks, Joy the Baker, and... (drool)... I can shove raspberries into the swirly pockets of these cinnamon rolls! They'll be just like childhood awesomeness!

So I did it.

It took 4.5 hours.

Seriously.

So what if Jarrod and I split one as a 1 am snack on a Wednesday night? no biggie.



Check out Joy the Baker's recipe for these yummies-- all I did was cut the amount of confectioner's sugar by a little more than half (for the icing-- it was more of a glaze, which was perfect for my taste), and instead of the raisins + pecans in the filling, sprinkled in about 1 cup of fresh raspberries.

The cinnamon roll dough itself ended up tasting (and having the consistency of) a light and mildly-sweet brioche, and the raspberries definitely added a tart zing to the sugary filling. I have a feeling I'll be making these again soon... now, if only I didn't need the oven for this...