The LilyPad: Dutch Babies!

Here is a LONG overdue post (I have lots of such posts swirling around in my brain and in the photo archives). A while back I posted about blueberry picking and mentioned that we made Dutch Babies. Brian asked if we made our own and I promised to post the recipe here. Well I'm finally getting around to doing that. The really sad part is that these photos are from a Dutch Baby making extravaganza that we had back in late August when Erica, Doug and their girls were in town for a wedding. So yeah - WAY PAST DUE. (Note that Erica did a MUCH better job posting about the visit - also note that I promised THIS post in my comments to her post - oh I'm so full of it).

Anyway, some dutch baby background. I learned how to make these when Corinne and I lived together during grad school. To be honest, Corinne pretty much taught me how to survive on my own in the whole "nourishment" area. Then I met Gordon who cooks like a master and keeps me well-fed - but that's a whole other discussion. Wiki doesn't have a whole lot to say about Dutch Babies, but they do talk about how the Original Pancake House has helped make them famous. I think that part is true - I've had them at the one in Chicago and they're really yummy. But they are SO EASY to make at home. We have them, on average, once a weekend and Lily loves them. We had one this morning in fact. When Lily was first learning to talk she would call them "babies". So if I told her we were having Dutch Babies for breakfast she's say "Eat Babies?" Totally cracked us up.

So without further ado, here's the recipe:

- Preheat oven to 425
- put about 2.5 Tbsp butter in a round cake or pie pan. Put pan in oven while it's preheating. Keep an eye on it though and pull it out when the butter is melted, before it starts burning! The amount of butter to use here is subjective. I think the original recipe called for 1/2 stick, but that always seemed like an awful lot to me.

- Mix in small bowl:
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup flour
2 eggs

- Add a dash of salt and some grated nutmeg
- Pour batter into pan with melted butter and bake for 15-20 minutes. They will puff up and look really cool:

- Garnish with lemon, powdered sugar, syrup, fruit, jam, pretty much anything! Lily's favorites are strawberries, "hot apples", syrup and jam.

And finally, here are some pictures of all the really cute people at our get-together. A mutual friend from college got married that weekend on the Cape (Congratulations Adam!), and a bunch of my MIT friends were all here for the event. So we drove down to visit with them all in the morning for brunch.