How To Make The Big Lemon Pancake!

This is one of my favorite weekend breakfast dishes - I've seen it called a German pancake or a Swedish pancake, but not in places where there were many Germans or Swedes, so we just always called it Big Pancake. It's yummy, spectacular and versatile, and also very easy, if you know a simple trick.

Here's what you need:

• 2 eggs, beaten just enough to break down and incorporate the egg whites
• 1/2 cup of flour
• 1/2 cup of milk
• 1 lemon
• 2 TBS Butter
• Powdered Sugar
• 10" oven-proof frying pan

Preheat oven to 425°

(Here's the trick - if you overmix or beat the batter too much, it will just sit in the bottom of the pan and cook into a tough disk. Just stir and don't worry if it is a bit lumpy. This is, by the way, the same basic batter for Yorkshire Pudding, minus the lemon - and the same trick you'll want to use to make sure those turn out perfectly as well)

1. Add milk to eggs and stir to incorporate
2. Add flour to milk and eggs and stir only enough to to break up any flour clumps and mix all ingredients evenly.
3. Zest lemon and add zest to batter, stirring only to mix evenly.
4. Put butter in pan and place pan in oven for a few minutes until butter is melted and bubbling.
5. Remove pan, swirl to coat evenly with butter, add batter to pan and return to oven
6. cook 20-25 minutes until it looks like the picture above - you can see the batter start to climb the walls of the pan after about 5 minutes, and after about 15 minutes it will look like this:

Remove from oven, squeeze the entire lemon evenly over the pancake and dust liberally with powdered sugar.

Variations:

Instead of lemon juice and powdered sugar, dump a bunch of fresh berries, bananas or whatever into the middle of the cooked pancake and add some - or lots - of whipped cream. Or use a cupcake tin to make individual berry cups - fill each depression about 1/3 deep with batter.

Enjoy!