Egg Recipe: German Pancakes

“So many eggs!” I hear that from first-time chicken keepers often at this time of year. All of that waiting for baby chicks to get old enough to lay eggs finally pays off when they are about six months old. With a new flock of 3-4 hens, you can easily go from zero to almost a couple dozen eggs a week. It’s hard to keep up, but one of my favorite recipes makes a big dent in the egg bowl: German pancakes.

This is a recipe originally passed onto me from my sister Anne and one I included in my book Modern Homestead: Grow, Raise, Create. Juniper helps me mix up the ingredients and it makes for a really easy and fast weeknight meal. Our little toddler doesn’t like egg dishes like scrambles and omelettes (yet), but these pancakes pass her picky-eating test.

German Pancakes (from Modern Homestead: Grow, Raise, Create)

• 2 T. butter
• six eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup flour
• 2. T sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• toppings

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Use two of your widest pans and melt one tablespoon of butter in each while the oven is warming. Remove the pans when the butter has melted and spread around to coat the bottom and sides.
2. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs. Add milk and beat to combine. Next add flour, sugar and salt, mixing until no lumps remain.
3. Pour the egg batter equally among the two pans. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes. Serve immediately while warm with your favorite toppings.

The pancakes will come out of the oven super fluffy, possibly even creeping up the sides of your dish. They “deflate” fairly quickly, but they still taste great as long as they are warm.

For the pans, my sister uses two 13″ x 9″ rectangular baking pans and the pancakes usually puff up the sides. I use my 12″ wide Le Creuset pan along with another 12″ copper saute pan. So rummage through your cupboards and use whatever combination you have that is widest.

We happily serve these up for breakfast and dinner equally at our table. I round out the meal with either potato pancakes or maple pork sausages. We use whatever we have on hand for toppings. In the winter, it might be lemons with powdered sugar or homemade blueberry syrup using frozen berries from last season. In summer, it’s all about fresh berries like the strawberries pictured here. Fall usually means gently cooked apples or pears.

Do you have a favorite egg recipe that helps you keep up with the chickens? I would love to hear about it in the comments below! It seems we can never have enough go-to recipes to help us use the harvest from our homestead.