Ebleskiver

EbleskiverMy mother’s side of the family is Danish, and I mean 100% Dansk. When my great-grandmother came over from Denmark, she brought with her the Christmas tradition of ebleskiver (or Æbleskiver if you want to be really picky) for breakfast Christmas Morning.

Ebleskiver are buttermilk pancake balls that are cooked in a cast iron pan with divots that make the cakes round. To eat them, we top the pancakes with butter, powdered sugar and strawberry jam (though lingonberry jam is traditional). It’s your basic morning sugar bomb and if you’ve been in Williams Sonoma lately, you’ve probably seen the pans and mixes. Ebleskiver have kinda become The Thing. In my opinion, using a mix is cheating. But then again my family has always had strong opinions about our ebleskiver.

My sister and I stayed with my grandmother from time to time while we were growing up. I always wanted Gam to make ebleskiver for breakfast. Without fail, a fight would break out between my sister and I about whether it was okay to have them on a “regular day” instead of only for Christmas morning. My sister was adamant that they were only to be consumed on Christmas Morning, and it would be a disaster of monumental proportions should we eat them any other day. I figured she needed to get a grip. The Ebleskiver Police couldn’t possibly be wandering around handing out tickets to people who ate ebleskiver on “regular weekends” so what’s the big deal? Being the youngest, I usually lost the argument. But the few times I was there by myself, Gam made them for me and imagine my surprise when I wasn’t hauled off to jail.

Now that we’re technically adults, we’ve passed our love of ebleskiver on to our own kids and the Christmas tradition continues at my sister’s house Christmas Morning. Though I do make ebleskiver from time to time during the year I have to admit, they do seem to taste better Christmas Morning…but I would never admit that to my sister…

Danish Ebleskiver

Ingredients
2 cups buttermilk
2 cups flour
3 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoon sugar

Directions
Beat egg yolks. Add sugar, salt and buttermilk to the egg yolks. Sift together the flour, baking soda and baking powder. Add this to the egg yolk mixture.

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold these gently into the batter.

Preheat the Ebleskiver pan and brush butter in the cups. Watch the heat as the pan get get too hot quickly and the Ebleskiver will burn.

Fill the cups 2/3 full with batter. When bubbles start to form around the edges, carefully flip to finish cooking on the other side.
Serve with butter, jam and powdered sugar.

* For filled Ebleskiver, add a teaspoon of applesauce or jam to the dough in the pan cups and barely cover the filling with a few drops of the batter. Turn carefully.

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