Aebleskiver
Tuesday, July 31st, 2007Aebleskiver covered in powdered sugar and served with jam.
I first encountered Aebleskiver when I was in the Danish city Fredrikshavn with my mother many years ago. At that time, I guess that it was 20 years ago, we used to take the car on the 3 hour long ferry ride between Göteborg and Fredrikshavn and then packed the car full of groceries once every month during the colder months. We shopped meat, Danish sausages and liver pâté, thick delicious fruit yoghurt and other food. The food in Denmark at that time was really cheap compared with the Swedish one, it was long before all those cheap LL, Willy’s, Lidl and Netto stores and my mother saved a lot of money making the groceries for our family of 5 hungry persons. And as she often pointed out, the Danish food tasted and was much better and she was right. As she can’t stand the Swedish liver pâté she used to buy loads of the Danish one instead. I still remember the yummy sandwiches with creamy liver pâté that I loved to eat, together with a glass of thick yoghurt.
During one of those many trips over to Denmark when I accompanied my mother, we followed the lovely smell from a café where we went in and ordered Aebleskiver and tea. We didn’t really know what we ordered, we thought it was some kind of apple cake due to the name, as aebleskiver means apple slices in Danish. But we didn’t get any apple cake or any apples at all. Instead we got delicious and warm Danish doughnut holes, covered with powdered sugar and served with jam in which we dipped the aebleskiver. We were thrilled and in love with these fluffy fried little balls and after a conversation with the staff me and my mother went out shopping again, this time on hunt after a special thing: an aebleskiver baker. We searched around the city and finally we found the very last aebleskiver pan, at least that day or week. An aeble skiver pan is either in cast iron and used on the stove or electric. We got an electric one and this spring when my sweet mother was up in Stockholm to visit me she had the aebleskiver pan with her as a gift. She still had the original box and I was so glad that she gave it to me.
The machine used to bake the aebleskiver.
The Danish aebleskiver are most often eaten during the winter months, especially around Christmas. As the weather this summer was really crappy I made some aebleskiver during a rainy day to get in mood. My husband hadn’t eat aebleskiver before but was really excited and thought that they were delicious. He said that they were the best doughnut holes and doughnuts ever. Myself I thought of my childhood memories with every yummy bite.
This post is also an entry for That crazy kitchen gadget by Not Eating Out in New York. Maybe the pan isn’t that crazy, but it’s unusual and it’s the craziest thing I have in my kitchen except for the curry loving cat Yoshi ;-) The round-up can be read here.
- Aebleskiver
(makes 40-50. Demands an aebleskiver pan. Adapted from Kerstin Kokk)
250 gram flour
125 gram butter, melted
375 ml lukewarm milk
3 eggs divided into yolks and eggwhites
1 tsp salt
0.5 tsp cardamom
2 tsp baking powder
1.5 tbsp vanilla infused caster sugar
Combine the milk with the egg yolks. Add flour, salt, cardamom and baking powder. Mix and then add the melted butter. Mix the batter until everything is well mixed.
In a separate bowl, whip the eggwhites until stiff and then gently fold them into the batter. Let the batter rest while you heat your aebleskiver pan. I don’t need any butter for my pan but if you have a cast iron one you probably need some butter. Pour about 1 tablespoon of batter in each hole and fry until browned and crisp on bottom. Turn them over with the help of a chopstick or fork. For me this went really quickly, as soon as I had filled all holes in my pan it was time to start turning the first one, but that all depends on your pan.
Serve the aebleskiver while still warm, with powdered sugar and jam.