Another German Recipe – Kaiserschmarrn

Guess I am on a roll this week with my German recipes – although this one might qualify as “typical German” but it did not originate in Germany, the most delicious desserts actually come from Austria and to be specific from Vienna. I felt like eating something sweet for lunch and so I made this dish for lunch, but in Germany this is actually eaten for dessert and Americans would possibly chose to eat this for breakfast, since its a pancake type of dish. Culture and mood seems to decide what gets eaten when but in this case it really doesn’t matter when you eat it, its delicious at any time of the day. .

The story goes that way waaaaaay back in the day the personal chef of the emperor of Austria didn’t know what to cook for the emperor and in an accident some eggs and flour fell into a bowl standing around and the chef added some sugar and milk and the Kaiserschmarrn was born.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter
4 eggs
1 cup flour
1 1/4 cup milk
3 tablespoons sugar
2-3 tablespoons raisins (you can soak them in water or rum, your preference ;-))
a pinch of salt
powdered sugar for dusting
Apple Sauce or fruit compote

Directions:

Melt the butter in a midsize pan on medium heat
Beat the egg whites with a little bit of sugar and set aside.
MIx the egg yolks, flour, milk, sugar, soaked raisins and salt. This should resemble a thick pancake batter. If the batter is too liquid add some flour and if its too thick add some more milk.
Fold in the stiff egg whites.
Pour the batter into the pan and bake on medium heat
When the batter starts to set on the top (but its still somewhat liquid) take two spatulas and divide the pancake into quarters, then flip each quarter, let it bake for a minute and start to divide the entire pancake with the spatula into bit size pieces. Don’t cut it into neat pieces, the idea is to have a “ripped apart” pancake (see photos).
When the pancake (pieces) are done to your satisfaction (I like to undercook it a tiny bit and like a lightly colored pancake, others like a nice dark brown pancake) plate the pancake pieces, dust with powdered sugar and serve with apple sauce or other fruit compote. I ate my Kaiserschmarrn with my home made strawberry fruit sauce.

Guten Appetit!