Kaiserschmarrn

Name: Kaiserschmarrn
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 10 people
Ingredients: 350 ml buttermilk; 150 g flour; 350 ml buttermilk; 2 tsp baking powder; 2 egg yolks; 1 tbsp cane sugar; 2 egg whites; 25 g butter, for the pan; 25 g butter, for frying in the oven; 1 tbsp cane sugar, for frying in the oven; sugar; freshly squeezed lemon juice; syrup, e.g., maple, blueberry, or cranberry syrup; Optionally, whipped cream

Kaiserschmarrn is a lovely, sweet addition to any brunch menu. The sweet pancake strips are inspired by the Austrian and Bavarian dessert, Kaiserschmarrn. They can be prepared in advance and heated whenever your guests are ready for something a little sweeter. You might also want to serve the pancake strips as a dessert. In that case, our Kaiserschmarrn recipe serves about 4 people who are hungry for some sweet and butter-fried pancake strips.

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Instructions

Pour buttermilk into a bowl.
Mix in flour and baking powder at the same time.
Mix in egg yolks, sugar, and salt.
In another bowl, whip egg whites until stiff. Gently fold them into the batter.
Divide the butter for the pan into 4 portions and let one melt to a golden colour in a frying pan (diameter of approx. 21 centimetres).
Pour about 200 ml of the pancake batter into the pan – it should be one big, thick pancake.
Cook the pancake at medium to high heat for 2-3 minutes until it is golden on one side.
Flip the pancake and cook it for about 1 minute on the other side.
Remove the pancake from the pan and onto a cutting board. Cut it into strips with a width of about 2 cm.
Crease the strips slightly and place them in small piles on a sheeted baking tray – there should be room for about 20 piles.
Prepare 3 more pancakes in the same manner.
Preheat oven to 250°C regular oven.
Distribute the butter for frying in the oven in small pieces over the pancake strips, sprinkle with sugar, and fry in the top of the oven for approx. 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

Questions about Kaiserschmarrn

Serving up an amazing new brunch dish or dessert is easy with our Kaiserschmarrn recipe. Below, you can learn more about the beloved Austrian pancakes by reading the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about Kaiserschmarrn, including how to cook and store it.

What is Kaiserschmarrn?

Austrian Kaiserschmarrn, which translates to Emperor's Mess, is a sweet dish of shredded pancakes served as a light meal or dessert in many parts of the former Austro-Hungarian empire and Bavaria. It was named after the Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph I, who had a great fondness for these Austrian pancakes. Today, Kaiserschmarrn pancakes are often served as a sweet brunch element or as a dessert with, for example, a fruity garnish, sugar, lemon juice, or syrup.

How do you make traditional Kaiserschmarrn pancake strips?

Kaiserschmarrn only adds a few extra steps compared to regular pancakes. Prepare the pancake batter, cook it in a thick, big pancake, and cut it into strips. Crease the pancake strips lightly, place on a baking tray, and prepare them for the oven with sugar and small pieces of butter on top. Fry in the oven on high heat to ensure maximum caramelisation. Serve hot from the oven and enjoy with sugar, freshly squeezed lemon juice, or your favourite syrup.

Can you make Kaiserschmarrn ahead?

It is entirely possible to prepare Kaiserschmarrn pancakes ahead of time and fry them in the oven right before serving. After you have cooked and cut the pancakes, simply leave them on the baking tray, if you plan to serve them before long. Otherwise, remember to properly store them, preferably hole, in an airtight container to preserve their fluffiness. This way the Kaiserschmarrn will keep for 1-2 days. If the pancake strips are very cold when put in the oven, you may need to fry them longer than the recommended 10 minutes.

Can Kaiserschmarrn be frozen?

Like most pancakes, these Austrian ones can easily be frozen and reheated. After making the pancakes and cutting them into strips, let the strips cool completely before placing them in an airtight container or a Ziplock bag to go in the freezer. The frozen Kaiserschmarrn will keep for up to 3 months in the freezer. The pancake strips may be put in the oven for frying directly from the freezer, simply remember to allow for more than the recommended 10 minutes oven time due to their low temperature.

Ingredients

Buttermilk	350 ml
Flour	150 g
Buttermilk	350 ml
Baking powder	2 tsp
Egg yolks	2
Cane sugar	1 tbsp
Egg whites	2
Butter, for the pan	25 g
Butter, for frying in the oven	25 g
Cane sugar, for frying in the oven	1 tbsp

Served with:

Sugar
Freshly squeezed lemon juice
Syrup, e.g., maple, blueberry, or cranberry syrup
Optionally, whipped cream

Kaiserschmarrn – sweet and caramelised pancake strips

Pancakes, like our American pancakes or fluffy soufflé pancakes, are a staple at most brunches. But if you want to experiment with something new without compromising on the deliciousness of a sweet pancake, our Austrian Kaiserschmarrn recipe may be just the thing to try.

This Austrian pancake dessert has all the luxuries of a classic pancake but offers even more complexity in its flavour profile. Presented in the form of rustic, torn strips, fried in the oven, these pancakes are a buttery, caramelised wonder. Our Kaiserschmarrn with is exotic-sounding name and enticing, crumpled look is sure to impress and delight friends and family.

If this delicious Austrian pancake dessert has inspired you to explore more classic, Austrian recipes, we recommend giving our lovely, authentic apple strudel a try as well. 

Explore the Austrian dessert and its deep flavours

Kaiserschmarrn works great as a sweet ending to a meal or as part of a larger brunch selection. But our Austrian pancakes recipe is not simply sugary-sweet. Rather, its sweetness is deep and complex due to the double caramelisation that happens during the cooking. It is first caramelised in the pan before it is then gratinated in the oven with butter and sugar to really bring out that rich, nutty flavour and beautiful golden-brown colour that only caramelisation can create.

Serving our Kaiserschmarrn with freshly squeezed lemon juice or a tart syrup like cranberry syrup brightens the pancake dish by adding an acidity and tanginess that offsets the sweet and buttery flavours of the twice-caramelised, shredded pancakes and balances the dish. You can also use a sweeter syrup for your Kaiserschmarrn pancake strips. Flavour wise, this Austrian pancake recipe truly has it all.

Classic Kaiserschmarrn with a twist

If our fluffy, shredded pancakes are on the sweet side of what you enjoy, a way to introduce more tartness into the dish itself rather than later as a garnish is to add dried cranberries into the pancake batter. This trick is used in some of the older, traditional Austrian Kaiserschmarrn recipes as well. The red berries offer a bright, tart flavour that pairs well with the sweetness of the pancakes themselves. The berries also add beautiful splashes of colour amid the golden-brown goodness of the crumpled strips.

Try adding rum-soaked raisins

While some Kaiserschmarrn recipes contain cranberries, the original recipes contain rum-soaked raisins. Adding 75-100 g of rum raisins to the pancake batter will provide a matureness to it by giving you sweet bursts of alcohol in each bite as well as introducing another texture. You can either make the rum-soaked raisins yourself or buy them; either way, they are a traditional and flavourful addition to your Kaiserschmarrn pancake strips, making them true to the original Austrian recipe.

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