When life hands you broken eggs …

We try to keep our egg business a family affair — meaning, we like a little child labor. So we send the next generation farmers out to help with egg chores. The four-year-old collects the eggs and helps wash them. The seven-year-old helps candle and sort and pack the eggs.

You have to be willing to accept some loss with this system. So the other day when the four-year-old returned from the coop with six broken eggs, it was time to make lemonade. Or rather, a giant puffy pancake.

I got this recipe from a blog called No Big Dill, and it’s full of great descriptions and pictures and you might just want to read it there. Go ahead, click on over. But I took a few photos of our Branch eggs in action so you can stay here and read all about it if you want.

The ingredients are few. You’re basically making a giant cream puff and eating it for breakfast. Oh yeah.

Start with 6 tablespoons of butter. Put it right on your rimmed baking sheet and melt it while you’re preheating the oven to 400.

 

While that’s going on, get the rest of your ingredients. Your six eggs, which may or may not be pre-cracked, depending how old the egg helpers are at your house. A cup of milk. A cup of flour. And 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

 

Mix it up! Finish cracking your eggs. Pause to admire their thick yolks and orangey yolks. Then mix them up.

 

Mix in your flour and salt, then stir in the milk. Gradually adding the milk helps avoid lumps, or you can do as I did and grab your whisk to try to work them out. It’ll be okay either way.

 

By now your butter is probably melted. Check and see.

 

Then whisk that melted butter in with everything else.

 

Your pan is already greased, so pour the batter on. My pan is pretty giant but you can use one that’s just 9″x12″.

 

And then bake it for 20 minutes. Apparently not peeking helps the pancake turn out right.

We usually serve this with whipped cream and berries, but on this occasion we went with the No Big Dill classic of lemon juice and powdered sugar.

 

Enjoy! This recipe is so tasty, we think you might want to try it … even if you don’t have six broken eggs laying around.

Puffy pancake

6 tablespoons butter, melted on rimmed baking sheet in oven
6 eggs
1 cup flour
1 cup milk
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Place the butter on a rimmed baking sheet and place in the oven to melt while it preheats. Mix the eggs, flour, salt, and milk together. Add your melted butter to the mixture. Pour the batter into the pan and bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes. Serve as desired: with lemon juice and powdered sugar, with whipped cream and berries, even with cheese and tomato soup.