Oma’s Kitchen

I’m started a new occasional series called Oma’s Kitchen featuring recipes from my grandmother.

Growing up, one of my favorite things about visiting my dad’s parents was the food. My grandparents immigrated in the ’50s and they still eat a lot of traditionally German meals but pancakes is one way my grandparents (or I should specify, my grandmother) has been Americanized. A traditional German breakfast consisted of fresh rolls accompanied by butter, cheeses, cold cuts, jams, honeys, perhaps a boiled egg or some yogurt and muesli. Below is a picture of breakfast from a couple of years ago when my husband and I were visiting family in Erzgebirge, Germany. It was not unusual for my brothers and I to spend a week at a time up in New Hampshire at my grandparents. While we loved the traditional German breakfast, we also loved pancakes. Germans pancakes are very different than their American cousin and they are nothing like a Dutch Baby. German pancakes are much more crepe-like. Also, they are not eaten for breakfast, they are typically a dessert or a light meal. Traditionally, they are eaten with apple sauce or a fruit compote but like I said we Americanized my grandmother in this regard. We would ask her to make them for us for breakfast and while we would often eat them plain with apple sauce, we also loved when them with apple slices and drizzled with maple syrup.

In recent years, I’ve been making them with blueberries because I almost always have some in the freezer. While the way I eat them is by no means traditional, they are a nice reminder of the weeks I spent in New Hampshire with my grandparents.

German Blueberry Pancakes

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 30 minutes
Yields: About 12 pancakes

Ingredients

2 teaspoons sugar

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups whole milk

4 large eggs

1 cup frozen blueberries (I prefer Wyman’s wild blueberries)

3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces

Instructions

Preheat oven to 200°F.

Whisk together flour, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. Add milk in a slow stream, whisking, then add eggs, 1 at a time, whisking well after each addition. Add the blueberries and stir in gently.

Heat 1 piece butter (1/2 tablespoon) in a 6-inch nonstick skillet over moderate heat until foam subsides, then add 1/3 cup batter, spreading evenly to cover bottom. Cook, reducing heat if browning too quickly and turning pancake over once with a thin flexible heatproof spatula, until golden on both sides, about 4 minutes total. Slide pancake onto a platter and keep warm in oven. Make more pancakes with remaining butter and batter in same manner.

Enjoy with maple syrup, cinnamon sugar or a fruit compote.

Notes

The blueberries can be omitted for a plain pancake or you can substitute them with other fruits such as apple slices.