Gluten Free Baked Apple Pancake

Healthy can mean so many different things - especially when it comes to food. In my household, for something to be healthy, all of the ingredients must be gluten free. Because my husband has Celiac disease, he is unable to eat foods containing gluten found in wheat, rye, barley, and most oats. What this means for our family is that whenever we cook and eat meals together, it must be gluten free - so we are a little creative in the kitchen sometimes.

Since we already had to modify a pancake recipe to avoid wheat flour, we decided to try a new style of pancake - a baked apple pancake.

We preheat the oven to 425 degrees. After dicing two cored Fiji apples, we melted one tablespoon of butter in a skillet on the stove. We tossed two tablespoons of Splenda (instead of sugar) with the diced apples, and combined with the butter on the skillet. We let the apples, Splenda, and butter cook together until the butter and Splenda melted together. Once the liquid was reduced, we added a teaspoon each of vanilla and cinnamon, and removed the skillet from the heat.

In a separate bowl, we whisked together one cup of milk, three eggs, one tablespoon of Splenda, one cup of gluten free flour (we used potato starch flour), and one quarter teaspoon of salt. Once well blended, add the flour mixture to the skillet over the apple mixture.

Placing the skillet in the oven, cook at 425 degrees for 20 minutes, and then reduce the temperature to 350 degrees for another 10 to 15 minutes. The final product will be a puffy, golden brown apple pancake. It is best to serve while still warm, to appreciate all of the flavors, textures, and spices. Slice the pancake into wedges, and serve with powdered sugar sprinkled on top. The second time we made this, we put whipped cream on top, which was a nice contrast with the cool creamy flavor, and the warm apple pancake!

To make this healthier for all of us, we substituted Splenda in place of sugar. To make it something my husband could eat, we used gluten free flour instead of wheat flour or "traditional" pancake mix. It was such a hit when I served on Thanksgiving morning that we made it for dinner a few days later.