And Finally..... The Æbleskiver pan has arrived

Those of you who have been following for a while will remember I ordered an Æbleskiver pan. Well, after a very long wait it arrived today. I got home from work with this very heavy cast iron pan. Washed it in warm soapy water. Coated it in vegetable oil. Baked it for an hour at 180C (and did a couple of baked potatoes for supper too). Re coated and baked it again to season it well. Having eaten our supper it was time for the first adventure.

I tried my local stores for buttermilk but it is an acquired taste so it was a fruitless search. I will get some at the weekend but I couldn't wait until then to try this out so I tried it with ordinary milk.

 beat the whites of two eggs in a clean stainless steel bowl (It might be my imagination but nothing lifts cream or eggs faster than stainless steel). Soon I had soft peaks and moved my attention to the yolks, a tablespoon of sugar, a cup of semi skimmed milk, a cup of plain flour and two teaspoons of baking powder. The power of Bamix means I can throw these into a jug and just blitz them. I poured this mixture into a fresh stainless steel bowl and added the egg whites. Folding them in gently I soon achieved a foamy batter.

The Æbleskiver pan had been on the heat for a while. Recipes talk of anything from two teaspoons to a tablespoon of oil/butter in each dish. I am trying to keep the weight off so I tried a teaspoon of butter in each first. I let this melt then added a tablespoon of the batter to each cell of the pan. As this bubbled to a set I added a half teaspoon of strawberry jam to each cell and topped them up to the rim. Using two metal skewers I started to free and turn each of the 'cakes' until they had been completely turned over to form golden balls. I removed these and placed them in a pre-heated oven at 200C to keep hot.

I repeated the exercise with a half teaspoon of almond oil in each cell. This time I added a half teaspoon of chocolate spread. The finished Æbleskiver were added to those in the oven.

There was enough for two more so I experimented with some St Agur cheese. These savoury version were cooked off in olive oil and once completed, served first. The sweet versions were dusted with a little sugar and brought in for dessert. 

The results were not photogenic but were very tasty. Now I have had a play and have the hang of the heat required in the pan I will go ahead and play with a few ideas. Once these are fit for public consumption then I will publish the results here. In the meantime I will enjoy the experiments to myself (though my wife may have to get a few :) )

Dreams of crisp Danish delights

Adventures with Æbleskiver 

I am often at my most creative in the wee small hours. I often wake at around 3 or 4am (perhaps I am a natural born baker?) and at this time my mind is often filled with ideas, This morning was one of those. I woke thinking about Æbleskiver. After tasting them at Noma, filled with herbs, I was inspired enough to research them a little. They are a traditional Danish dessert made in an Æbleskiver pan like the one below.

 The pan is heated over a medium heat to a point where butter sizzles on the pan. The dimples are greased with butter before a buttermilk batter is spooned in to fill to about half way. At this point apple is traditionally added before more batter is added to fill each well. The batter is now left to cook until the edges of each Æbleskiver begin to brown and pull away from the edges. At this point they are traditionally turned using a knitting needle to create an evenly browned, spherical dessert.

My thoughts around these little delights focus on varying the sweetness of the batter and using other ingredients to fill them. The possibilities are endless but before I can play I need a pan. A quick web search showed that they could be purchased from the usual large on-line retailer, Amazon. I found a good looking pan at under £30 but it was delivered from the US. I can't wait that long to start to play so a return to Google soon showed this more local supplier http://www.danishfooddirect.co.uk where I found the pan shown above. One is now on order and I will let you know how I get on when it arrives.