Dutch Baby/German Pancake

attempting something you think will be hard, but then not failing at it because it was never as hard as you'd thought it would be.

Chapter 65

You remember the first thing you ever approached, expecting to be overwhelmed and ultimately defeated by the complexity of the task? Like assembling an Ikea dresser or having a really difficult conversation with your family/loved ones. You remember the first time you surprised yourself by accomplishing said thing with grace and aplomb? You struggle through many things, but you occasionally hit it right out of the park and surprise even yourself.

For some reason, you tend to walk into things thinking it will not go well. You try not to do that anymore. Something about having a positive outlook or manifesting intention or self-esteem or something you heard in a podcast or from a friend or someone who loves you.

There are foods in this world that seem to be mysterious and complicated and beyond the means of mere mortal cooks. Souffles are like this, though you may have done them successfully before on a night when the rotation of the earth was correct, Uranus was not stationed retrograde in Taurus, and the eggs had been lain on a full moon. Other foods appear to be complicated and so you never bother and then you find out that they really are not.

Thank Smitten Kitchen for providing the recipe her mother used, all these years, for Dutch Baby German Pancakes. The honored family recipe was passed down from the complimentary recipe book that came with her blender. Apparently, you can just blend ingredients, dump them in two buttered 9-inch cake pans, bake it at 400 for 20 minutes, then drop it down to 350 for another 10 minutes.

You really thought it was going to be terrible. You really thought this was something that takes years to master and it’s totally like baking and you don’t bake, or at least you keep saying that you don’t bake, but maybe you do! Maybe you do bake, it’s just new and strange and you’ve failed (or not entirely succeeded) a couple of times and then decided you were bad at it.

But here you are, blending 4 eggs on low until they are yellow and frothy, adding a tablespoon of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 2/3 cup of sifted flour, 2/3 cup of milk, and 2 tablespoons of soft butter. A half an hour later, you are covering a German pancake in powdered sugar and squeezing 150,000 lemons all over it and having a great time.

This isn’t just about having faith in yourself or confidence or whatever. It’s about doing things you think are overwhelming an unapproachable and risking either being great or not being great, but doing it anyway. Sometimes you are going to fail and other times you get to eat German pancakes and feel quite pleased with yourself.