Apple Puff Pancake Recipe • The Prairie Homestead (2024)

Not gonna lie,

Mornings here on our homestead are not exactly leisurely…

Someday things will settle down, and I’ll be able to sit out on my covered porch with coffee cup in hand, sipping slowly while watching the chickens peck in the yard.

SOMEDAY.

But let’s be honest: I don’t even have a covered porch yet (it’s being built as we speak), and I’ll soon have 3 kids under the age of five. Do you know what that means? Ain’t nobody gonna be slowly sipping coffee around here for a while.

And when it comes to breakfast, it’s all about fast and easy. We do a lot of oatmeal, and green smoothies, and sometimes scrambled eggs, and whatever else I can throw together while my ravenous two-year old is hanging on my leg threatening a pre-breakfast melt-down. (He is a BEAR when he is hungry…)

Therefore, I love things like puff pancakes (aka German pancakes) which can be throw together in the midst of chaos, but still taste like you put some TLC into preparing them.

I tested this particular apple puff pancake recipe on a morning when:

a) Prairie Boy was running around outside wearing a diaper and cowboy boots,

b) Prairie Girl was running into the kitchen to repeatedly tattle on Prairie Boy,

c) The new puppy was tackling the kittens in the living room,

d) And my countertops were covered with all the veggies I had picked from the garden the previous day, but had yet to process, leaving me a 12″ space to prep breakfast.

So…. if this recipe can stand up to all thatchaos, you KNOW it’s good.

Apple Puff Pancake Recipe

• 4 tablespoons butter or coconut oil (but I prefer butter)
• 4 tablespoons sucanat/rapadura, divided ** (I like this one)
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 large apples, peeled, cored, and sliced thinly
• 3/4 cup whole milk
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup flour (I use unbleached all-purpose flour like this one. You can use whatever you have)
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt (I use this one)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (how to make vanilla extract)

** Sucanat or rapadura is a type of unrefined, granulated cane sugar I use in all my baking. However, if you don’t have it, you can simply substitute in equal amounts of regular brown sugar.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. In a 10″ cast iron skillet, melt the butter and stir in 1 tablespoon sucanant and the cinnamon.

Cook the apples in the butter/sugar/cinnamon until they are soft and you have a lovely light brown syrup developing in the bottom of the pan from the delectable combination of the butter and sweetener.

Spread the apples out evenly over the pan, and remove from the heat.

In a separate bowl, combine theremaining ingredients and mix thoroughly. You can do this with a whisk, stand mixer, hand mixer, or blender. If you use anything other than a blender, you might have a slightly lumpy batter, but I’ve never had the lumps cause problems.

Pour the batter over the apples, and place the cast iron skillet in the oven. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until puffed and brown.

Make sure to gather the kids around the oven when you pull out the pancake, so they can oooh and ahhh over how cool it looks and you can feel like Super Mom (or Dad) for at least a minute. It will deflate a minute or two after it comes out of the oven, but it’s pretty impressive in those initial moments.

Serve with fresh fruit and/or maple syrup, if you wish. However, we are usually fine with just eating ours plain.

Kitchen Notes:

• The apple version of this pancake doesn’t seem to puff quite as high as my regular puffed pancakes, but it’s still pretty.
• If you don’t have a cast iron skillet, you can use any sort of oven-proof pan that will also tolerate the stovetop.

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