Good Eats: Dutch Babies

Do you love it when you find a meal that your whole family will eat?  I do.  It happens so rarely in my house.  You see, I have a child who is a super picky eater and has been from birth.  So, when I find something that he will eat right along with the rest of us, I use it...a lot!

It makes me feel all June Cleaver when I can sit down at my table with my 3 angelic children, hungry after a day of play, and my husband who has worked so hard all day.  With my table perfectly set, my kitchen nice and tidy and a fire, cheerfully cracking in the fireplace...and then I snap back to reality.  I am no June Cleaver and my kids are no Beaver and Wally.  No, my kitchen has cracked eggs on the counter and dirty dishes in the sink.  My children have been fighting and whining all day.  My husband HAS worked hard all day...if you can call drawing "hard" work (wink, wink). And if I lit a fire in my fireplace, it would fill my home with smoke faster that you can say, "Mom, what's for dinner?"

But this recipe, the reason for this post, is a tried and true family favorite.  Mr. Smarty Pants loves it so much that when he was three and at the doctor's office for a well-child check, the doctor asked him what he does when he is hungry, and he answered "Eat Dutch Babies."  I had to quickly explain that Dutch Babies were actually eggs and flour and milk, and not some poor child from the Netherlands.

Anyhoo, here is the recipe:

Pre-heat oven to 450.  In a 9x13 baking dish, put 4 TBSP of butter in the bottom and put into pre-heating oven.

4 Eggs, beaten until foamy

1 cup milk
1 cup flour

Add to eggs and beat the heck out of em.

Pull pan with melted butter out of the over.  Pour egg mixture over butter, but do not mix them together.  Pop the whole thing back into the oven and bake for 16-minutes.  (I don't even wait for the oven to finish pre-heating before I put the Dutch Babies in to bake).

It will puff up in the oven and turn a nice golden color.  Serve as soon as they come out of the oven.  I top mine with cinnamon, powdered sugar, and syrup.  Or, if I'm feeling crazy, I caramelize some green apples and put them on top with syrup.  We always pair our Dutch Babies with some sort of fruit and either bacon or sausage.  Yum!

***Rule of Thumb: sometimes I make this for the boys for lunch and I don't need to make a whole batch.  So, if you want to make smaller batches, or perhaps a larger batch (because one 9x13 pan doesn't quite feed our whole family!), then here is the rule: for every ONE egg, use 1/4 cup flour and 1/4 cup milk.  Easy-Breezy.