My Big Fat Swedish Pancake

After a bit of surfing around I came to the conclusion that baking pancakes in the oven is a quite local Swedish/Finnish thing, with oven pancakes more often being served as a main dish and ‘normal’ pancakes for dessert. This only came up because we had one for dinner yesterday and I’d be interested to know whether similar dishes occur in other parts of the world. Also, since I’m given to understand that pancake batters are different in different places I’m going to include an actual list of ingredients, with measurements, which is pretty close to a first.

I’ve always been a bit skeptic about oven pancakes, probably because of the ones served in school cafeterias (commonly known as wrestling mats) but homemade ones are clearly much better (ooh, surprise…)

Oven pancake batter (serves 2-3)

600 ml milk

300 ml wheat flour

½ teaspoon of salt

3 eggs

A standard recipe contains just the above (and can also be used for pan-fried Swedish pancakes) but I have to be different of course, so I’d suggest adding a small amount of fat, like oil or butter, and half a teaspoon or so of baking soda.

Mix everything together thoroughly and pour into a greased baking tray or ample size dish. Bake for 20-30 minutes at 225 C. Serve with jam.

This particular pancake has some bacon in it and is served with a sprinkle of leeks and blueberry jam. I would have wanted the leeks in the batter as well, but the oven pancake aficionado of the household vetoed that. You can put all kinds of stuff in the batter though. Carrots, apples or berries would probably be nice.