Aebleskivers (Danish Pancake Donuts)

Not every recipe you try is gonna be a success. Not every successful recipe will be something you want to try again…
A couple of months ago my mom bequeathed to me one of her many fantastic thrift store finds – a cast iron skillet that looked like it had gotten into a fight with a mellon baller. With a little help from my dear friend google, I was able to figure out it was an aebleskiver pan. And what is an aebleskiver?? It’s essentially a fried pancake ball. Well, with a definition like that, how could I resist a little culinary experiment?
The results: Are they delicious? Of course (fried balls of apples and dough?! how can you go wrong?). How about a pain in the you-know-what? More than I care to admit. Will I be making these again? Not any time soon. To be honest there was just too much oil in the recipe (even after I cut it in thirds) and it was way too much work for the final product. I will say that the batter itself is quite tasty and makes some delicious regular ol’ flapjacks when cooked in a frying pan.
Oh well. At least I can now say that I know how to make aebleskivers…

(Adapted from Allrecipes’s Aebleskiver Recipe)

What you need (makes about 30 aebleskivers):

What you need to do:
  1. Using an electric mixer, beat the egg whites in a glass bowl until they can hold stiff peaks (see above).
  2. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, sugar, egg yolks, butter and buttermilk. Beat until smooth. 
  3. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.
  4. Spoon about 1 tsp of vegetable oil in the bottom of each cup in the aebleskiver pan and heat.
  5. Pour about 1 tbs of the batter into each cup, add a pinch of apples to each cup then cover with another tbs of batter.
  6. When the batter starts to bubble at the edges, use some sort of cooking utensil to flip them over (I used a fork and spoon, but traditionally you use two long knitting needles…I am anything but traditional).
  7. Continue cooking until both sides are a light brown.
  8. Tops with powdered sugar, whipped cream or maple syrup (or all three) and enjoy!
This entry was posted in Breakfast, Dessert, Vegetarian. Bookmark the permalink.

5 Responses to Aebleskivers (Danish Pancake Donuts)

  1. Donna Hansen Archer says:

    I grew up in a large Danish community in Iowa. Aebleskivers are the community pancake day as a fund raiser for the fire department. Lines are always 2-3 blocks long and volunteers using 8 -10 pans were cooking aebleskivers as fast as they can for the large crowds of people. The traditional way to eat them without fruit is to break them in half, rub them in butter and dip the butter side in sugar and eat. I teach a 7th grade exploratory Family and Consumer Science Class and always make Aebleskiver for my students, they love them!! Glad to see you discovered how wonderful that are too!

    • Ari says:

      That’s awfully impressive! I certainly didn’t have a line of people waiting to try them (only a few hungry friends :P). I’ll have to try the butter and sugar approach next time I make them. Sounds delicious!

  2. I agree that aebleskivers are so tedious to make! I’ve made them too in my pre-vegan days and while my recipe for the batter looks similar, I definitely did not need 1 tsp of oil per aebleskiver. I had my pan seasoned and then I just used a pastry brush to coat the oil in each well. I will admit that it was a pain to clean the pan, though! I got to pan to make takoyaki but I suppose that won’t happen anytime soon either. 😛

    Yours look great, though! I like the apples in there. 🙂 We liked it with a blueberry filling.. and nutella, yum! 🙂

    • Ari says:

      It’s good to see that you don’t have to use quite so much oil. I’ll definitely try the brush technique next time.

      p.s. Takoyaki look fantastic! I might have to try that out when I have some free time!

  3. Sang says:

    Wow! I’m impressed with your first try at these. I love mankig them, too. They are also fun to stack in a tower and drizzle with something sweet like real maple syrup or cherries in a syrup. Great job. Nice presentation!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

What is 15 + 10 ?
Please leave these two fields as-is:
IMPORTANT! To be able to proceed, you need to solve the following simple math (so we know that you are a human) :-)