Mom’s Puffed Apple Pancake

My mom used to make this and as kids we loved it. Her original recipe is below - and my tweaks today.

mom's puffed apple pancake

6 eggs
1 ½ cups milk
1 cup flour
3 Tbs sugar
1 tsp vanilla
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp cinnamon
¼ pound (1 stick/114g) butter
2 apples, peeled and thinly sliced
2 – 3 Tbs firmly packed brown sugar

 Preheat oven to 425F/Gas mark 7.  Mix eggs, milk, flour, white sugar, vanilla, salt and cinnamon until blended.

 In oven melt butter in 12” fluted porcelain quiche dish or 13 x 9” baking dish.  Add apple slices and return to oven until butter sizzles, but don’t let it brown.  Remove dish and immediately pour batter over apples.  Sprinkle with brown sugar.  Bake in middle of oven 20 minutes or until puffed and brown.  Serve immediately.

I had always been under the impression this came from the German-American side of the family but on double checking with my mother she said she got it from a newspaper. Way to go Mom.

I made a few adjustments and substitutions, detailed below.

Oat-milk instead of dairy milk
Spelt flour instead of white
2 Tbs white sugar instead of 3
1 apple, not peeled + 1 stick of rhubarb
Demerara sugar instead of soft brown, mixed in rather than sprinkled on top
Added 1/4 tsp cardamom seeds (taken from the pods)

The recipe came out fine with all the substitutions - however it took 1 hour to cook rather than 20-30 mins - I imagine due to the denser flour as well as my baking dish being 12x8”so slightly smaller than called for. The spelt flour gave it an excellently nutty taste and the puffed crispy edges were delicious. Served with pork + apple sausages for brunch.

In future I might try doing a half and half spelt flour with plain to see if the cooking time could be brought down to 40 mins. I think the cinnamon was lost with the denser flour, so possibly would leave that out but up the cardamom, because I love it and I think the nutty flour would easily take more. Not sure if the vanilla added much with this mix so might leave that out also.