I've heard of the Dutch baby (pancake) before. A magical breakfast creation that's a breeze to make, requires no flipping and no staggered eating shifts, and which puffs up over the sides of the cast-iron pan it's baked in. Yet somehow, as with so many of the recipes from Baked Sunday Mornings, I never bothered to try making a Dutch baby for myself before this weekend.
Matt and Renato's kitchen-sink Dutch baby is a caramelized bananas and chocolate chips affair, so I went through some stages of indecision over how I was going to approach this recipe. Caleb likes bananas and he likes banana pancakes, so I thought I'd make their kitchen-sink Dutch baby while he was here, and I'd have a banana-positive person to weigh in on the recipe. Alas, there were too many great things to eat and not enough time, and I didn't quite get around to bananas before he left.
Instead, I decided I would substitute in frozen berries for the bananas. I let my milk and eggs come to room temperature for an hour, started pre-heating my oven, placing a 9-inch glass pie plate in the oven to heat at the same time. Then I made the batter and let it sit for 25 minutes instead of 5 minutes, because that's about how long I'm used to letting pancake batter rest. 
Once the batter was rested and the oven had been at a constant 425 F for about 20 minutes, I put 3 tablespoons of butter in the hot pie plate, swirled it around, added my frozen berries (quickly rinsed to remove ice crystals), and put that in the oven for a couple minutes. At that point, the butter was fully melted and the berries were fragrant, so I added my pancake batter, tossed a scant ¼ cup worth of bittersweet Ghiradelli chocolate chips on top, and baked my version of Baked's kitchen-sink Dutch baby for 20 minutes.
I was a little worried the berries might release too much water, but fortunately, my Dutch baby turned out perfectly cooked. It did stick a little to the pan, and it puffed a bit strangely, but I forgave it because it was absolutely delicious. In my opinion, this kitchen-sink Dutch baby was a lot more dessert than it was breakfast, but I have eaten pie a la mode for breakfast before, so I'm hardly one to judge. I think next time I'll try grating a pear into the hot pan with a little cinnamon and cardamom and leave out the chocolate, but I can definitely see a future for myself featuring lots of variations of a Dutch baby.
Head over to Baked Sunday Mornings for the recipe and to see what others thought.
