Ebelskivers? Aebelskivers? Whatever. They're Delicious.

My sister and I had a conversation a week ago about cooking for our families and I wish I could have recorded it to play here for you because I'm imagining more than a few of you would be nodding your heads and saying, "YES!" to many of our comments.

One of the things we agreed on was that with six people to cook for it is pretty much guaranteed that at every meal at least one person won't like what you've fixed. (Well one if you're lucky--two is par for the course).

We moaned about how tough it can be to find a meal that everyone will eat but I'm telling you this latest menu item of ours would be that one-in-a-million event.

They're called ebelskivers and I'd kind of vaguely seen them mentioned here and there but it wasn't until I saw my good buddy Julie at Thinking About eating them that I decided to really get serious about making some.

First, they're Danish. I believe they can be spelled "aebelskivers" or "ebelskivers" from the Danish word for apple slices and they're basically a Round Little Pancake of Joy. Not merely pleasure or happiness but absolute and complete joy.

You use a simple pancake batter (I'll give you my recipe at the end) and fill each of the seven little cups in your ebelskiver pan about halfway, add a drop of filling, then flip the circles upside down in the cups with a pair of wooden skewers (I used the bamboo kind that I keep for kebabs or satay) and let them cook up nice and golden brown.

The possibilities for filling are really quite endless. You can try sweet stuff like pudding, pie filling, jam, peanut butter, fruit, chocolate chips, whatever you want to find as a surprise in your mouth. I've wanted to try some savory options too like a bit of cheddar and ham or bacon or a piece of sausage. Those could also be very very satisfying.

When I decided to buy an ebelskiver pan I went down to Allen and Peterson, a local kitchen store, and found an aluminum ebelskiver pan by Nordicware for about $34 which wasn't dirt cheap but for the kind of thrills I was anticipating I figured I'd splurge.

I got halfway home before slapping my forehead in an "ARRRRGH!" because I'd forgotten that I own a Diva induction cook top which will only work with pans that can carry a magnetic current. Or in other words, I can only use iron or pans with a ferrous core. Stainless steel, aluminum, glass, copper--all of those won't work because they won't allow the magnetic field to pass through the pan and heat up the surface.

I'll spare you the finer details, I've really meant to do a follow up post on how much I love my induction cooktop that I got two years ago (you can read the initial review at "Induction Cooktops by Diva de Provence") but the whole point is that it meant that the aluminum pan I'd just purchased wouldn't heat.

So I went online to find a solution. I found a cast iron pan from Norpro for $12.99 and with shipping it ended up costing me just under $16. What a bargain.

I'm sure it's not as slick and non-stick as the aluminum version and I'm sure I end up using more grease with the cast iron version but it works well and the heavy iron pan gives a nice golden crust to the little guys that is probably tastier than what their aluminum-formed brothers can offer.

So here's a video of the ebelskiver action to give you a better idea of what you have in store should you decide to purchase a pan for yourself. You get the added bonus of hungry commentary from my film crew.

Here's the pancake recipe I use though Bisquick would also work fine too. I wonder if you could use a cornbread style batter?

1 cup flour
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 eggs
2 tablespoons canola oil

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