1/4 cup salted butter
3 eggs
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
pinch of nutmeg
powdered sugar to taste (optional)
lemon zest to taste (optional)

Place the butter in a 2- to 3-quart baking dish; set the pan in a 425°F oven until the butter starts to melt. When the butter begins to foam, prepare the batter: Whirl the eggs at high speed in a blender for 1 minute. With the motor running, pop open the lid, gradually pour in the milk, and then slowly add the flour; whirl another 30 seconds. Carefully remove the hot pan from the oven and pour in the batter. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 20–25 minutes, or until the pancake is puffy and well browned. Dust with nutmeg. Serve immediately with powdered sugar and lemon zest to taste, if desired. Serves 2.

Tips & Tricks

• Want to feed more people? This recipe is easy to scale up. For each additional person at your table, increase the pan size by 1/2–1 quart and add an extra tablespoon of butter. To the batter, add one more egg and an extra 1/4 cup each of milk and flour.
• If your pancake seems dense like a custard and doesn’t puff easily, try the same quantity of batter in a slightly larger pan. I typically use a ceramic or glass baking dish that creates tall, crispy corners, but a round cast-iron skillet can work well.
• I use salted butter for this recipe and find it doesn’t need additional sodium. But you can easily sub in unsalted butter and a pinch of salt.
• I learned to make blini when I lived in Russia (see below), but I still craved Dutch Babies—and didn’t have a blender. It turns out you can mix the batter quite well with a wire whisk. The results are not quite as puffy but just as tasty.
• Most of my family just piles on powdered sugar as a topping, but my dad prefers maple syrup; fruit syrups are also delicious. At Christmas, my mom always made apple Dutch babies, placing a layer of sautéed apple slices in the bottom of the pan before pouring in the batter. When I make them now in summer, I can’t resist mounding fresh berries and Fresh Yogurt in the corners.

3/4 pound cremini mushrooms
butter or sunflower oil for cooking
1/2 medium onion (about 1/3 cup when finely chopped)
2 cloves raw or Roasted Garlic (optional)
3/4 cup warm mushroom stock, Vegetable Stock, or water
2 teaspoons plus 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup Sour Cream
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1/3 teaspoon dried or 1 teaspoon fresh dill
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon ultrafine sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon butter, melted

Wipe any dirt from the mushrooms with a damp cloth or paper towel and cut them into thin slices. Finely chop the onion and any garlic. Melt some butter or oil in a large cast-iron pan or other skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté for about 5 minutes, or until translucent. Add the garlic and mushrooms, cooking for another 5 minute, or until soft. Reduce the heat to very low. Mix 2 teaspoons of flour into the warm stock, and then add it to the mushrooms and mix to the consistency of gravy. Stir in the sour cream, salt, pepper, and dill.

In a medium bowl, lightly beat the eggs and then add the remaining flour, the sugar and salt, and 1/4 cup of milk, whisking until the batter is smooth. Whisk in the remaining milk and melted butter until just incorporated, thinning the batter with a splash of water if it’s thicker than heavy cream.

Heat a lightly greased 10-inch cast-iron or other nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Scoop up a scant 1/3 cup of batter, and quickly pour it in as you would with crepes—in a circular, tilting motion that evenly coats the bottom. Cook for about 40 seconds, until the edge begins to curl and brown. Flip with a spatula, cook another 20 seconds, and then flip onto a plate. Repeat the process with the remaining batter, regreasing the pan after each blini.

Scoop about 1/4 cup of warm filling into each pancake. Fold like you would for Sourdough Cabin Bread: Fold 1/3 over and then the other 1/3 over, like folding a piece of paper for a letter, with the filling tucked in the center. Rotate 90 degrees and repeat, forming a square packet. When finished, drizzle the blini with any remaining mushroom sauce or sour cream and serve immediately. Makes 6 blini.

Tips & Tricks

• Like Dutch Babies, blini require few special ingredients and can be easily made from a well-stocked pantry. If you crave blini but don’t have fresh mushrooms on hand, many other fillings can be substituted, from sweet jam to savory vegetables.
• Mushrooms make some of my favorite blini any time of day, but sautéed potato and onion or cabbage and carrot were other popular flavors in St. Petersburg; we’d often make all of these so that guests could mix and match.
• With any filling, sour cream is key, either inside or on top. If you make your own, you can create a softer sour cream that’s closer to what I found in Russia. While there, I bought it in bags, snipped off the corner, and squeezed it out. You can also add a dollop of store-bought American sour cream or thin it for drizzling: just whip it with a little milk or cream until you get the right consistency.
• The Russians aren’t big on herbs and spices; I can never resist adding garlic, but they’d often complain it was too strong. They stick to salt, pepper, parsley, and dill, but don’t be afraid to spice these up to suit your tastes.
• I tend to fold blini and roll crepes, so I make blini slightly larger and easier to handle. For smaller blini, even appetizer sized, use less batter in a smaller pan.
• These pancakes are so filling I usually plan two per person, meaning this recipe can serve 3. But as I learned from my Russian friends, the leftovers are delicious after a second frying, so it’s worth doubling or tripling the recipe. If you do and work quickly, you can run two skillets at a time to speed up the process.
• To reheat your stuffed blini, sauté them with a little butter on both sides until they are crispy. I prefer this to warming them in the oven, where they can get soggy.