Food52
Well, I have been going through a food cooking revolution over the last two years. Firstly, I moved to an Assisted living community. I have a glorified toaster convection oven, a two burner stove and a 700 watt microwave and less than 4 square feet of counter surface. Then I began to develop a wide variety of food allergies and intolerances that I never had before, and certainly do not fit current known categories like gluten-free (can't eat tapioca or potato starch) but also have limited tolerance of gluten or lactose. In my community they prepare meals for us, most of which have something that I cannot eat. The most challenging has been desserts. I simply can no longer eat most baked goods. Can't really figure out why. But the combination of wheat flour and white or brown sugar I no longer tolerate. Likewise honey, or maple syrup. And I have never tolerated stevia or monk fruit sweeteners. But I can tolerate white and brown sugar as long as they have not been baked with flour in any way, particularly with white flour. So what is a girl who loves to bake to do, and in reduced kitchen size and equipment as well? So I came up with this recipe for a dutch baby, that has no added sugar as the basis for a lot of different ingredients. I even have a chocolate one! for chocolate desserts. I add the sugar AFTER it comes out of the oven, so that the sugar is not cooked, but melts into the butter on the pancake. Please note that as toaster ovens vary greatly, the cooking time can vary as much a 15-20 minutes. Also, serving size depends on your crowd. My husband and I eat this in one sitting. But it really can be 4 moderately generous servings. The batter is very forgiving. I made the batter one morning, and then refrigerated it, intending to bake it that evening for dinner, but didn't get back to it for 5 days. Came out perfect! I have not made this with non-dairy milk, as I don't like most of them. Feel free to improvise/modify. So decide what you want to make? Dinner salad with nice airy base? Or to support that welsh rarebit? Or spring mushroom medley in sauce. Or how about a sweet dessert like, berries and cream or spring rhubarb sauce or perhaps, something chocolate like chocolate mousse or maybe, add cocoa powder to the batter and serve with a rich vanilla ice cream. Here I wanted to use up a nice navel orange. So I thought of crepe suzette. Ever tried to make crepes? Never had much luck myself, but this worked great. So this recipe is a non-alcoholic take on Crepe Suzette using my toaster oven and a Basic modified dutch baby recipe. And accommodating the fact that I cannot eat baked sugar and flour together. Bits and pieces of this recipe were taken from Epicurious for the basic idea, but have been greatly adjusted and modified to meet my dietary needs, no alcohol, and use of toaster oven in place of regular oven. The Dutch baby pancake is modified from their savory recipe and the orange sauce, a modification of their poached oranges recipe with candied peel and ginger.
