Finnish Oven Pancake

A Finnish Oven Pancake is a rich morning treat made from pantry staples. Try this recipe with eggnog for a festive holiday breakfast. It's also perfect for a lazy Snow day.

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I love a good snow day. 

It's Mother Nature giving you an opportunity to pause, 

catch your breath, and take in the beauty of the world.

What's the best breakfast to make on a snow day?

To me, this Finnish Oven Pancake is the perfect Snow Day breakfast. It's made with common ingredients (eggs/flour/butter/milk) and it takes a while to bake--something I wouldn't normally do on a busy weekday morning.

Do you need a recipe to use up some eggnog?

During the holiday season I have eggnog on hand so I'll switch things up and make this using eggnog for a special treat. Try it with any flavor of eggnog you've got!

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While living in Virginia I started our family tradition of the Finnish Oven Pancake Snow Day Breakfast.


You may know this as a Dutch Baby, but I've seen many Dutch babies (Thomas and Emily come immediately to mind) and while I'd love to nibble on chunky baby thighs, they didn't look a thing like this.



This will always be a Finnish oven pancake or Pannukakku to me simply because I first ate one while working on a dairy farm in Finland.


One of the heifers delivered her first calf very prematurely, and my 21 yr old self was horrified that the calf was not given all of the rich colostrum (first milk). Instead some of it was used to make a pancake such as this one. Sort of like garlic scapes--make the most of this delicacy while it's available, you know?

For the record, we did get more snow and the kids got a snow day!

Years after I left Finland my mom gave me a copy of Fantastically Finnish Recipe Book (Amazon affiliate link). The headnotes of Gerry Kangas' recipe back up my experience in Finland.

There are 3 Finnish Oven Pancake recipes in this slim volume, also ones by Helena Iloniemi and Mal Rowe. My version is a mix of all 3 recipes plus my own twist.

Since the ingredients are all common and readily available right now, consider this the next time you've got a Snow day.

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Note: This recipe is awesome if you have a stand mixer. If you're standing there, holding your own mixer or whisk for 10 minutes, choose a different recipe for your oven pancake.
No eggnog? Use whole milk, or evaporated (canned, not sweetened condensed) milk, or half milk and half cream instead.

Finnish Oven Pancake with Eggnog
By Kirsten Madaus

A Finnish Oven Pancake is a rich morning treat made from pantry staples. Try this recipe with eggnog for a festive holiday breakfast. It's also perfect for a lazy Snow day.

Prep time: 00:15
Cook time: 00:25
Total time: 00:40

Yield: 4-6 servings
Ingredients:
2 teaspoons butter
3 eggs
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup all purpose flour
2 cups eggnog, any flavor (or whole milk, evaporated milk, half & half, or cream)
1 teaspoon vanilla
to serve--more butter, powdered sugar, jam, honey, or maple syrup

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Divide butter between 2 round cake pans (mine are 9 inches, but 8 or 10 would also be fine) and stick the pans in the oven while it is preheating so that the butter melts.

In a stand mixer (see Note above) beat eggs until thick and foamy.

Add dry ingredients and beat 5 minutes, then scrape down the sides and beat another 5 minutes until smooth.

Add eggnog and vanilla, mix well. (This long beating time is why I love my stand mixer for this recipe--I'm off putting away the flour and sugar and stuff while the mixer is working hard).

Divide the batter between the two cake pans and bake for 20 to 25 minutes until the pancake is lightly browned and has risen on the edges.

It will deflate upon standing, while you're dithering about cutting it for a serving photo or leaving it in the snow or what. That's OK. Serve wedges of pancake with butter and jam or powdered sugar or syrup. Perhaps Cranberry Honey Butter for a festive holiday treat?

Don't do what I did: I once made this using freshly ground soft white wheat flour and forgot to beat the eggs separately before adding the rest of the liquid ingredients. The result is below--a weirdly lumpily puffed pancake.  The taste was the same, though there was a slight graininess to the pancake texture once it came out of the oven and deflated.  I'm betting it was a result of my grinding my wheat berries (not uniformly ground) and suspect that using whole wheat pastry flour would result in a smoother batter that would rise uniformly. Still, beat the eggs first please.