Baked Pancake with Pear and Cardamom

This dreamy pear oven pancake makes a special breakfast or brunch thanks to cardamom-spiked pears and an easy dutch baby batter. Simple to make with 10 ingredients and 15 minutes of active time.

If you're looking for a wower of a breakfast recipe, look no further than this cardamom pear baked pancake.

A cousin of the dutch baby, this oven pancake combines a simple eggy batter with baked pears. A touch of sugar sweetens the dish, while cardamom adds its cozy flavor. Top the whole thing off with a dusting of powdered sugar and drizzle of maple syrup for a cozy dish that works well for breakfast or brunch – and even dessert! For an extra-decadent treat, add a billow of whipped mascarpone or homemade creme fraiche.

Like my 30-minute poached pears, this recipe is a great way to use pears that are firm-ripe. A brief stint in a skillet with sugar and butter softens them up, and they get cooked further in the heat of the oven.

If you don't have pears, never fear. This recipe works well with peeled and sliced apples (similar to the apple buckwheat puff pancake in my cookbook, which is also gluten-free) or with stone fruit and/or berries, like this berry peach oven pancake that I also shared using the same formula.

I first shared this recipe in 2010, when TBG was just 1 year old. At the time, I was eating wheat flour, which I used in this recipe. Nowadays my recipes are all gluten-free, and I've added a gluten-free option to use in place of the all-purpose flour in the recipe card. Below is my original text from 2010.

The end of summer always comes as a bit of a shock. I'm not talking about the lack of beach days, road trips or forest hikes - I'm a spoiled Californian, after all, and can enjoy these activities nearly year-round.

No, I'm talking about breakfast.

There is a time of the year, usually in late October or early November, where yogurt, fruit and granola simply stop being appealing. The 'last chance' peaches sit, neglected and rotting, in the airing cupboard. The jar of Saint Benoit yogurt remains in the fridge, untouched. And the granola jar has long run dry.

For someone who spent her first 12 years of life eschewing breakfast, I certainly give it a lot of thought these days!

So what does one make on a chilly morning for a quick breakfast?

Well, lately I've been simmering oatmeal with an apple grated into it. But that's not particularly exciting, now is it? (Still, I may bore you with it in a later blog post.)

If you're not in a rush, though, you can have this glorious baked pancake puffed and ready to eat in less than an hour.

The other day I was seduced at Rainbow Grocery Co-op not by a cute produce worker (sadly), but rather some slender and fragrant Japanese pears. Their skin was sticky to the touch, and they smelled of tropical fruits, like guava or passion fruit. I came upon this Deborah Madison recipe in my favorite cookbook Local Flavors (affiliate link), which I've been wanting to try since I purchased the book seven years ago, and mixed up the batter. I lovingly sliced the pears, and with much anticipation, tasted one-

-and realized my error! It was a secret Asian pear - tasty, but crisp and almost watery; certainly not a pear you would want to bake with. I guess the 'Japanese' bit should have tipped me off, but in my defense, they looked nothing like the apple-round 'Asian pears' I was used to seeing.

But I made the pancake thingy anyway, and despite the lack of 'buttery' (as the recipe calls for) pears, it was still awesome. Dramatically puffed from the oven, it was a sight to behold. The barely sweet batter encased lightly-caramelized pears flecked with freshly ground cardamom. The crusty brown edges made a satisfying contrast to the delicate interior, and despite my greatest fears, the pears tasted tender and, well, pear-like. Drizzled with a bit of warm maple syrup, it felt decadent and nourishing all at once.

I compared clafoutis to an oven pancake, so it probably won't be particularly helpful when I compare the texture of this oven pancake to a clafoutis. But I'm gonna do it anyway.

This is like a breakfast version of clafoutis. Where clafoutis is rich and sweet, this batter contains milk, rather than half and half, and no sugar (2 tablespoons flavor the pears, but the batter itself contains none.) Clafoutis puffs a bit, but not nearly as much as this bad boy. Clafoutis would be offended if you deigned to pour maple syrup over it, but this pancake begs for it shamelessly.

I casually studied Traditional Chinese Medicine for a time (I did live in Santa Cruz, after all), and learned that baking foods in the oven makes them not only hot in temperature but warming to the body, having been slowly infused with heat. Whether you buy this or not, turning on the oven undeniably warms up the house. It is said that pears benefit the lungs, important during flu season, and cardamom, a warming spice, aids digestion and increases spleen chi. (I won't go into all the smack they talk about sugar, eggs and dairy, though.)

See? Even Chinese medicine agrees - this is an ideal breakfast for fall. It may not be quick enough to make before work, but it is simple enough to throw together on a leisurely bojon morning.

And nearly as virtuous as a granola bowl.

Bojon appétit! For more Bojon Gourmet in your life, follow along on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or Pinterest, purchase my award-winning gluten-free baking cookbook Alternative Baker, or subscribe to receive new posts via email. And if you make this pear baked pancake, I’d love to know. Leave a comment and rating below, and tag your Instagram snaps @The_Bojon_Gourmet and #bojongourmet.

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Baked Pancake with Pear and Cardamom

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This dreamy oven pancake makes a special breakfast or brunch thanks to cardamom-spiked pears and an easy dutch baby batter.

Alanna Taylor-Tobin

Prep Time: 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 35 minutes minutes

Total: 45 minutes minutes

Servings: 4 servings

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• ¾ cup all-purpose flour*
• ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 - 3 medium pears, ripe but firm, cut off the core and sliced ¼- ½-inch thick
• ½ teaspoon ground cardamom
• juice of ½ a lemon
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• powdered sugar for dusting (optional)
• maple syrup for drizzling

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Equipment

• 1 10-inch ovenproof skillet

Instructions

• Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 400ºF. Place the butter in a 10-inch cast iron (or other oven proof) skillet and put in the oven to melt.
• Combine the flour and salt in a large bowl, make a well, and add the eggs. Whisk to combine, adding the milk little by little until the batter is smooth. Whisk in the vanilla and about two-thirds of the melted butter. Set aside.
• Heat the skillet with the remaining butter over a medium flame, and brush some of the butter around the rim of the skillet. Toss in the pears, cardamom, lemon juice and sugar. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the pears are tender and the sugars are beginning to caramelize, about 10 minutes.
• Pour the batter into the hot pan over the pears and place in the oven. Bake until golden and dramatically puffed, as though trying to escape from the pan, about 25 minutes. Dust with powdered sugar and cut into wedges. Drizzle with maple syrup and serve immediately.
• Leftovers, should there be any, reheat beautifully in a toaster oven in 5 or 10 minutes.

Notes

Adapted from Local Flavors by Deborah Madison (affiliate link).

Any variety of pear will work here, even Asian pears. If your pears are more ripe, you can shorten the initial cooking time. For less-ripe pears, extend the cooking time, or start with poached pears and omit the sugar and initial sauté.  

For a gluten-free version, use the following mixture of flours (or try a GF AP blend such as Bob's Red Mill 1 to 1):

¼ cup (25 g) oat flour, ¼ cup (27 g) almond flour, 3 tablespoons sweet rice flour, 1 tablespoon tapioca flour

For dairy-free, use plant milk (almond or oat) in place of regular milk. 

If you don't have pears on hand, make this with peeled, sliced apples instead. Or use blueberries or peaches and skip the fruit-cooking step. 

Nutritional values are based on one of four servings.

Nutrition

Calories: 348kcalCarbohydrates: 43gProtein: 10gFat: 15gSaturated Fat: 7gCholesterol: 192mgSodium: 456mgPotassium: 269mgFiber: 3gSugar: 20gVitamin A: 620IUVitamin C: 5.3mgCalcium: 110mgIron: 2mg

Making this? I'd love to see!Tag your snaps @The_Bojon_Gourmet and #bojongourmet!