Finnish Pancakes with Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce

I know that photo kinda looks like pizza, or frittata. Don’t be fooled. It is actually a creamy, custardy pancake, topped with garden fresh strawberries. It goes without saying that serving this…for dinner….was a smashing success. The kiddos could hardly believe their luck.

I picked the recipe because we had strawberries ripening in the garden. And then I saw the adjacent recipe for Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce, remembered the neglected rhubarb also in the garden, and decided that I needed to make both.

I’ve never made a Finnish pancake and so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I did a little Googling and came up with two qualities that make a pancake Finnish.

1. It is baked in the oven in a pan (if you’re authentic, it’s in a cast iron frying pan)
2. A lot of melted butter is first poured into the pan, and then the batter is poured on top of the butter. Not only does this make the pancake not stick, it also creates lovely, buttery pockets in the pancake that run with buttery richness. Mmmm…… The Sweetie Pie explained it as “French toast, without the toast”.

The pancake turned out to be much easier than I’d expected. There is a beautiful photo in the book of the pancake being pulled out of the oven and it’s all puffy on the edges and a little brown, sort of like a cream puff. Mine didn’t do that. The Peanut and I sat in front of the oven waiting for it to puff up, but it never did. Maybe my eggs weren’t fresh enough. Oh well. It was still delicious.

You might question the assertion that this recipe serves 2. You might think, “It’s a 9 inch pie plate, for goodness sake! I can get four servings out of that!” but you would be mistaken. I actually think this recipe serves 1. But I guess the authors are more generous than I would be and are willing to share with a friend. I ended up making three pancakes to serve the Sweetie Pie and the four kiddos. Once I put one in the oven, I’d mix up the next one and let it rest while the first one finished baking. The timing was just about perfect.

I made the sauce earlier in the day. I used honey instead of brown sugar, which made it completely GAPS-legal, so even I got to taste this one. It reminded me of my favorite cranberry sauce, only with strawberries instead of cranberries–perfect for summer. I only meant to eat one bite, but before I knew it I’d eaten five. I had to put it away quickly so I wouldn’t eat the rest of it.

We topped our pancakes with the strawberry rhubarb sauce, plain yogurt, and fresh strawberries.

I’m tucking this recipe into my hat for Christmas morning (shh!)