A dutch baby made with graham crust; cream cheese and lemon whipped cream topped with macerated strawberries to evoke a classic cheesecake taste.
On the east coast, come summer, we visit various farms to pick fresh, organic fruit. Every year we stay for hours and come home with way too many berries. I am one of those fomo visitors who has a bucket practically spilling over and yet, as I make my way back to the booth to pay, I make multiple stops because I see that one berry I couldn’t bear to leave without. And there are many one berries I feel this way about, lol.
Picking season won’t be here for another week or so but we have already started to get some beautifully ripe strawberries at the farmers’ markets. One thing I am super strict about when it comes to berries is that I believe you should only cook or bake with them when they are beyond the point of tasting good fresh – and at no point before that! This past weekend I was rummaging around the market for lilacs and heard one of the farmers telling a customer, ‘strawberries taste best when they are fresh, not cooked’ and I was like YES, you get it!
So let’s talk about what we are going to do with these ruby jewels. I regularly make a blueberry dutch baby for my family from a recipe I came up with last year, when blueberries were in season. It’s a lil different than your usual dutch baby recipe because the butter is reduced and I used whole wheat flour. We loved it so much I’ve made it every time we wanted something a little different for our weekend breakfast. Made it again about a month ago and I briefly considered using them instead, but I really don’t like chunks of strawberries within a bake, especially once it cools and they get all wet and weird. I’d rather use them as a topping because that is how they taste best. Taking this idea one step further, I decided a whipped cream would best complement the two layers. And then I thought… well what if I made it all a bit more like cheesecake?!
So I got to work testing and here we are. I made the dutch baby with lots of cinnamon and replaced the sugar with honey to make it taste like the graham crust layer of a cheesecake. I added cream cheese and lemon to my whipped cream. And guys, I really did not think this would be the star of the dish because it was almost an afterthought, but this cream cheese whipped cream is incredible! I don’t sweeten mine too much because I depend on the sweetness of the strawberries, and tbh, I would just sit and eat a bowl of these together while the dutch baby is baking.. so, um, make a lot of this if you imagine this will be you too!
Can we substitute whole wheat flour with a different kind of flour? What about all-purpose or bread flour?
AP would be fine!
This was soooo good! The Dutch baby really had the signature graham cracker flavor and the strawberries with the cream cheese mix are just yummy. I only used half the amount of cream so I guess my final whipped cream was a bit thicker. Question about the salt: do you use kosher salt? I used the amount of (fine sea) salt specified in the recipe and found it to be a bit too salty, especially the whipped cream. We had it as a dessert though, maybe that’s why I craved some more sweetness. Next time I will skip the salt in the whipped cream, because there will definitely be a next time!
Ah Jeannette, that is so wonderful to hear! Thanks so much for sharing your experience with the recipe – I’m so glad it really evoked that signature taste. About the salt, I usually use fine sea salt so this could be the difference between the level of saltiness in our dishes. This article from SK talks about the difference in saltiness between two kinds of kosher salt.