Pannukakku (Finnish Pancake)
Golden and custardy, this pannukakku likes to put on a show, puffing up dramatically in the oven. It is the easiest hands-off holiday breakfast that is destined to become your new brunch showstopper.
🔍 Recipe At-A-Glance: Pannukakku
- ⏱ Prep Time: 5 minutes
- ⏰ Cook Time: 30-50 minutes depending on your pan size and how thick you want your pancake.
- 🥞 Flavor Profile: A thick oven-baked pancake that has crispy edges and a creamy, custardy middle
- 🎄 Good For: The easiest fancy brunch, a Christmas morning where you don't have to spend all your time in the kitchen.
- 🧡 Difficulty: Got a blender and an oven-safe dish? Then you can do this!
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🧡 Why You'll Love This Recipe
Hiya friend: I'd like to introduce to you our traditional family Christmas morning breakfast! Pannukakku (a Finnish oven pancake) is an oven-baked pancake that falls somewhere between the texture of a soufflé and traditional American pancakes. Let's get baking!
Here's why you'll love this recipe:
- Easy as Sunday morning: This is absolutely the easiest way to get a holiday breakfast on the table in a flash. No whisk or bowl, just blender magic and cooking it all together in a hot baking dish. You get to put your feet up and enjoy an eggnog latte, and you end up with a giant tower of a pancake ready to slice, top, and serve!
- Top it as you like it: We love ours served with fresh berries, maple syrup, and a dusting of powdered sugar, but the topping possibilities are almost endless.
- Tested through the years: Our recipe for pannukakku is a family recipe passed down for generations through my husband's Finnish-Canadian family.
🎄 The Ingredients You Need
- Milk and butter: This recipe is super forgiving! I've made it with all kinds of milks (non-dairy included), regular and dairy-free butter...it always comes out amazing!
- Flour: I've made this with all-purpose flour. I've made this with gluten-free flour. Both made great pancakes!
- Vanilla extract: Because the ingredients for this recipe are so simple, you're going to be able to taste the vanilla. Be sure to use pure vanilla extract instead of imitation...homemade vanilla is great here!
Make sure to check the recipe card below for the full ingredients list, along with quantities and my expert tips and tricks.
🔁 Variations & Substitutions
- Pannenkoeken: We have two recipes for Finnish pancakes here on Wholefully. This one (pannukakku) is an oven-baked thick pancake, while the other is lettu (AKA: pannenkoeken or Dutch pancakes), which are thinner, skillet-cooked pancakes similar to a crèpe.
- Top it off: If you like something as an American pancake topping, then you'll probably enjoy it on a Finnish pancake too! Try maple syrup, berries and powdered sugar, warmed apple pie filling, bourbon peach jam or simple blueberry jam, or homemade apple butter!
🥣 Pannukakku How-To
Step 1: Set the rack on your oven in the middle so your pannukakku has plenty of space to rise. Stick a 10" cast iron skillet or a 9"x9" baking dish in the oven while you preheat the oven to 400°F. Then add butter to the heated pan, and put it back in the oven to melt.
Combine all the pannukakku ingredients in the basin of your blender or in a large bowl.
Step 2: Using an immersion blender or traditional blender, blend everything until very smooth. That's it!
Step 3: Carefully take the hot skillet or baking dish out of the oven and pour the batter in.
Step 4: Bake for 30-50 minutes, depending on the size of your pan (see the recipe below). Pour yourself an eggnog latte or peppermint mocha, and put up your feet while you wait. By the end of the bake time, the outside of the pancake should be very puffy and golden brown, while the center still looks like custard. We use the knife test to determine doneness: a clean knife stuck into the middle of the pancake should come out cleanly.
Step 5: Pannukakku is really best eaten straight out of the oven. It will be gloriously puffy when you first take it out, but as soon as it comes out, it will start to deflate. No worries, that's what it's supposed to do! Cut the pancake into wedges or rectangles and serve warm with your favorite pancake toppings.
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🙋🏻♀️ Pannukakku FAQs
If you enjoy a topping on a traditional American pancake, chances are you'll also like it on pannukakku! Here are some of my favorite flavor combinations:
Sliced strawberries and whipped cream
Blueberries, lemon zest, and a dusting of powdered sugar
Canned apple pie filling (especially if you warm it up a bit first)
Butter and maple syrup
Chocolate hazelnut spread and fruit (especially bananas and strawberries)
For a nice, fluffy pancake, go with a 9"x9" baking dish or a 10" cast iron skillet. A 9"x13" dish or 12" skillet will work as well, but you'll want to reduce the cooking time (and you'll get a thinner pancake out of it).
👩🏻🍳 My Expert Tips & Tricks
- A pancake by any other name: There are lots of names for this kind of oven-baked pancake: Dutch baby, German pancake, Dutch puff, and what we call it in our house-pannukakku, or Finnish oven pancake.
- Stay in the center lane: Use the middle rack of your oven and make sure there is plenty of space for your Finnish pancake to rise! It will get big and puffy, kind of like a souffle.
- Keep calm and garnish on: The pannukakku will start to deflate almost as soon as you take it out of the oven. Don't panic! That's exactly what's supposed to happen. Slice it up and serve with whatever toppings you'd like.
🥞 More Great Holiday Breakfast Recipes:
If you tried this pannukakku or any other recipe on my blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the comments!
📖 Recipe
Pannukakku (Finnish Oven Pancake)
Ingredients
- ½ cup unsalted butter 1 stick
- 3 large eggs
- ¾ cup all-purpose flour a good gluten-free all-purpose flour works, too
- 1 pint whole milk
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
- Fresh grated nutmeg for topping
- Maple syrup, berries, apple pie filling, whipped cream, or your favorite pancake toppings
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F. While the oven is heating, place a 10" cast iron skillet or 9"x9" baking dish in the oven and allow it to heat.
- When the oven is warm, pull the rack with the skillet out, and add the butter to the pan. Push the rack back in, close the oven, and allow the butter to melt and slightly brown.
- While the butter melts, combine the eggs, flour, milk, salt, sugar, and vanilla in the basin of a blender, and blend on high until very smooth. You can also combine this with a whisk in a mixing bowl, but we have better results using a traditional blender or immersion blender to get it silky smooth.
- Open the oven again, and pull out the rack with the skillet on it. Pour the batter into the melted butter in the skillet and sprinkle with grated nutmeg. Push the rack back into the oven, and bake for 45-50 minutes, or until the top of the pancake is golden brown and bubbly, and the middle looks custardy and buttery. A knife inserted into the center should come out clean.
- Remove from oven-it will begin to deflate as soon as you do-and cut and serve immediately topped with your favorite toppings.
Notes
- For a thinner pancake, use a 9"x13" baking dish or 12" cast iron skillet, and decrease the cooking time to 30-40 minutes.
- Use the middle rack of the oven to give your pannukakku room to rise.
- Don't panic when it starts to collapse in on itself as soon as it comes out of the oven. That means you did it right!
- This recipe is pretty forgiving. Use dairy-free milks and butter if you need it, sub in duck eggs if that's what you've got, or swap in gluten-free flour as needed!
This Finnish pancake is the easiest way to get pancakes on the table on a busy holiday morning. We loved it with some butter, syrup, and fruit!