Our Family's Chore-time Adventures: German Pancake Muffins

German pancakes are a big favorite on the Hess side of our family. I'd never had them until I married in. Our kids are huge fans, and I've had to start quadrupling the recipe to satisfy the ravenous wolves. We love having this for dinner, especially on Sundays, or even for brunch on the weekends. Traditionally, we've eaten this in a 9x13 pan. But lately we've been making them in muffin tins, and they are awesome! For some reason it makes it so much more fun with the condiments when they are individual servings, you can dress them up in all different flavors.

I love the way they puff up in the oven!!

German Pancake Muffins:
1 cup flour
1 cup milk
6 eggs
1 TBSP lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
4 TBSP butter

Our Favorite Condiments:
maple syrup
powdered sugar
cinnamon and sugar
brown sugar
whipped cream
Nutella
jam
berries
bananas
honey
peaches

So first you want to preheat your oven to 450 degrees. It usually takes my oven about 10 minutes to get this hot, so I always preheat first, that way I can be mixing up the batter while it heats up.

Now it's time to mix up your batter: flour, milk, eggs, lemon juice and salt. (If you don't have lemon juice, you can use 1/3 cup buttermilk and 2/3 cup milk. The tangy flavor of the lemon juice/buttermilk makes a big difference.) Mix until just combined.

Next take the butter and chop it into 12 pieces. Put a piece of butter in each muffin cup. Stick it in the oven and let it melt in the bottom. Watch it, or it will burn if you leave it in too long.

Pull your muffin tin out of the oven and scoop 1/3 cup of batter into each muffin cup. Then put your muffin tin back into the oven and bake for 11-15 minutes (make sure you use a hot pad/oven mitt when you put the muffin tin back in- I've grabbed mine with bare hands on accident before -forgetting it was hot- OUCH!).

When they are done, they are big and puffy like this. They flatten way down as they cool. Aren't they pretty when they're puffy?!

Now they are looking a bit plain. It's time to dress them up.

Use your imagination. You can't go wrong with these guys. Last night we used strawberries and cream. And the kids went a little crazy with the sugar. It's a good thing we used baby food jars to hold the condiments, so there were limited quantities available.