THINKING BIG AT BREAKFAST

Giant Dutch Baby is puffy pancake baked in 9-by-13 tin

One of the saving graces of this pandemic for my son has been his magnetic tiles. He puts them together and takes them apart, as often and in as many ways as he wants. I feel the same way about milk, f lour, eggs and butter: Four basic ingredients that can be mixed and matched and varied to create so many dishes.

That’s especially true for pancakes. Although I prefer buttermilk for my traditional f luffy stack, with that quartet you can pull together everything from thin crepes to thick, f luffy kaiserschmarrn, rather like scrambled sweet pancakes. Vary the liquid, the leavening and the proportions, and you can play around with the texture and height. Too many pancakes? Not in my book.

Now I have one more to share with you. It’s a Dutch baby, a puffy baked pancake that requires minimal time, ingredients and effort. You’re probably more used to seeing this morning staple come out of a skillet, but I couldn’t help figuratively slapping my forehead in a “no duh!” moment when I saw the large-format one peeking out of the pages at me in Edd Kimber’s new “One Tin Bakes,” which published Sept. 1. Kimber, the winner of the neveraired-in-the-States first season of “The Great British Bake Off,” makes everything in this delightful, well-written cookbook (his fourth) in a 9-by-13 tin. It’s nothing fancy — a workhorse — yet when you put something as simple as this 5-minute batter in and bake it until the edges dramatically puff, you’ll be rewarded with something that looks, and tastes, absolutely impressive.

The recipe takes well to your choice of fruit. I tested with fresh berries, sliced peaches and diced apples and liked them all. Based on personal experience, I wouldn’t recommend frozen fruit, as it bled and made the

pancake soggy, although I did still enjoy it. You can bake the pancake first and then add the fruit, to achieve a thinner, drier bottom.

This recipe is going into my regular breakfast rotation to jazz up what otherwise might be a meh morn

ing. No one would complain if you served it as dessert, either, in which case you may want to drizzle with heavy cream or serve with ice cream.