King Arthur’s Lemon Puff Pancake Is Pure Breakfast Magic

To say I’m a fan of Dutch baby pancakes would be a huge understatement. We cook and eat Dutch babies at least once a week — and sometimes more — so when a friend described King Arthur Baking’s Lemon Puff Pancake as “part crepe, part pancake, part popover” I had to give it a try.

King Arthur doesn’t technically call this skillet pancake a Dutch baby, but it has all the markings of one: You blend the ingredients into a wet batter and cook it in a skillet, where it bakes up into a delicate, beautiful puff of glorious goodness. Would adding a big shot of lemon flavor make this pancake out of this world? Here’s my honest review.

Get the recipe: King Arthur Baking’s Lemon Puff Pancake

In a departure from my everyday Dutch baby recipe, King Arthur calls for greasing a skillet and setting it aside while making the batter rather than preheating the skillet in the oven. The batter is super simple: just flour, sugar, salt, milk, vanilla, and eggs, which are mixed together swiftly and poured into the prepared skillet.

The skillet then goes into a hot oven, and this is where the magic happens — the air in the batter and the steam created from the liquid makes the pancake puff into a misshapen pancake. The cracks and ridges of the resulting pancake are perfect for holding butter and syrup, but King Arthur suggests a topping of lemon juice, powdered sugar, and optional berries instead.

I admit I was incredibly doubtful that this Dutch baby batter would rise well without a preheated skillet, because nearly every single recipe I’ve tried in the past promised that a ripping hot skillet is the secret to a pancake that rises and puffs well. Not only did the King Arthur Lemon Puff Pancake rise, but it also nearly puffed right out of the skillet, forming a delicate, tender-crisp edge in the process. This pancake was delightfully crisp and a little chewy, and had lots of buttery, lemon flavor.

My one critique is that there’s no lemon added directly to the batter, which makes the recipe title a bit of a misnomer. Sure, you squeeze lemon juice over the baked pancake, but you could do that with any Dutch baby. And okay, the egg yolks do make the pancake a lovely lemon hue, but still — in my opinion, anything named a Lemon Puff Pancake should have some zest and juice mixed right in. I plan on making this pancake again in the future, just to see how much lemon flavor I can really pack in.

• Don’t skimp on the butter. The thick layer of butter swiped onto the skillet gave this pancake the most tender-crisp edge and helped it rise, so don’t be skimpy!
• Go all in on the lemon flavor. You’ll need to cut a lemon for serving anyway, so why not zest it first and add that, plus some lemon juice, into the batter? That way you can really claim this recipe as a Lemon Puff Pancake and not just a classic Dutch baby.

Have you tried King Arthur’s Lemon Puff Pancake? Tell us what you think in the comments!