Hello there, and happy June! I was on vacation (a real one!) for most of May, but I’m back now with 5-2: Old-Fashioned Oven Pancake. There’s not a lot that goes into this dish (just 4 ingredients), and it’s probably better/more commonly known as a German pancake and/or a “Dutch baby”.
So far, this is the only mention of lingonberries that I’ve seen in this whole book–I always think of them as something you only see in jam form at IKEA, but according to Wikipedia they are grown in multiple regions including North America (not just Europe/Scandinavia). They’re tough to find fresh here, but frozen seems to be widely available.
There’s not much to this oven pancake–if you’re looking for a “pizza” twist on essentially the same idea, you can check out 5-31: Oven Pizza Pancake. I used that one for when I taught cooking class to kids a million years ago because it was a quick pizza that didn’t need yeast or time to rise.
Ingredients. Real eggs, but oat milk and fake bacon. Life is weird in 2022.
Bowl with flour. Asparagus will be for the side dish (gotta eat your veggies).
2.5 cups of (oat) milk measured out. Oat milk is my favorite of the “fake” milks, it seems to substitute the best for “real” milk without the extra taste that you get from some of them like coconut milk. It’s a bit thinner than real milk, but if you are used to low-fat or skim milk (old habits die hard–I was never even offered full fat milk as a kid, it was 2%, skim, or nothing), oat milk isn’t too far off from that.
Mixing up a very basic pancake batter.
Cooking my fake bacon. This is probably the one I like the best that you can get from most grocery stores, but there’s this other stuff I get from the delivery box that’s REALLY good. Per their website, you can get it at Whole Foods, but it’s probably twice the price there as it is online. It’s definitely one of those “once in a while things”, although bacon in general should probably be in that category regardless of if it’s “real” or not (or what price it is).
It’s getting there, but I’ll be the first to admit it’s a pale imitation of the real thing.
After cooking. Nowhere near as exciting as the real stuff, but perhaps a tad more heart-healthy.
Chopped it up as best I could.
“Sprinkled” the bacon pieces at the bottom of my pan (in this case, a 1/3 hotel pan).
Poured in the pancake batter. Fingers crossed–we’ll see how this goes.
After baking. I think the “sheen” it has is from using oat milk instead of cow milk. Let’s cut in and see how the inside looks:
Final plate, with a cross-section/slice (and a side of asparagus and tater tots). If I did it again, I’d probably use the better fake bacon and some lactose-free real milk instead of the oat milk, but let’s be honest: I’m not doing it again. I’ll stick with scrambled or sunny side up and pancakes on the side next time.
Grade: B-
