Hosting a big Christmas morning breakfast has been my thing for about ten years now. A typical Christmas morning looks like this: I rise early in the morning and start the preparations, friends and family arrive around ten, starving from all their present opening, and we feast. Everyone leaves, I wash all the dishes and collapse in a heap on the couch around noon.
This year between the regular restaurant cooking, and the specialty cookie orders I am about cooked out, and looking forward to a few days off. My solution to the Christmas morning breakfast before me? Simplify. This year I am making a big batch of sausage links, a few of these cinnamon sugar dutch puffs, throwing some fresh berries and syrup on the table and calling it done. A dutch puff is super quick to make, makes you look like a kitchen wizard with the way it puffs up high over the pan, and is easy peasy to clean up.
Happy baking friends. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!
Cinnamon Sugar Dutch Puff
2 tsp. Granulated Sugar
½ tsp Cinnamon
4 Tbsp. Butter
4 Large Eggs, Beaten
1 Cup All Purpose Flour
1 Cup Whole Milk
¼ tsp. Salt
¼ tsp Cinnamon
½ tsp. Vanilla
Mix 2tsp. Granulated sugar and ½ tsp. Cinnamon together and set aside for later use.
Put 4 tbsp. Butter in a 10 inch cast iron skillet and place in a cold oven. Turn oven on and preheat to 400 degrees. This will heat the skillet and melt the butter. You want to pour your batter into a hot skillet, it helps it to puff up nice and high.
Meanwhile, in a medium size bowl stir together the eggs, flour, milk, salt, vanilla, and ¼ tsp cinnamon.
When oven is preheated and butter is melted, remove skillet from oven and pour batter into skillet.
Immediately return skillet to oven and bake for 20 minutes.
After baking, remove from oven and sprinkle the top with the cinnamon/sugar mixture you set aside in the beginning. There will be a nice little puddle of butter on your dutch puff that will pair nicely with that cinnamon/sugar. Trust me.
Slice into wedges and serve with fresh berries (we love blueberries with ours), and your favorite syrup.
*Note: Gather everyone around the oven when you remove the dutch puff, that’s when it will be at it’s most impressive height. After a few minutes out of the oven the middle will settle a bit. Don’t worry it is still delicious.
