Day 288 - Danish Pancakes (aka aebleskiver)

I almost bought these little Danish pancakes one other time at Trader Joe’s – they are in a bag in the frozen breakfast food section.  I decided against them that time, but they caught my eye again and I thought, “What the heck, let’s give ‘em a go!”.  Their proper Danish name is aebleskiver, isn't that fun to try to say??  We ate them as a leisurely Sunday breakfast while reading the Washington Post.  

This is the bag - it contains quite a lot of pancake balls

Here is what we thought:

David – Taste - very good.  Texture - lovely.  Convenience of eating them - not so great.  You have to tear ‘em apart and hold ‘em in your hand, unless you are gonna eat one whole ball at a time, which is more of a mouthful than I care for.  I used my hands to eat them, not a fork. 

David dipping his Danish Pancake!

Susan – They are a little bit bland.  They are sort of an excuse to carry whatever topping you want to put on the ball to your mouth, as opposed to actually being  flavorful themselves.  I put out several toppings to choose from:  TJ’s Fig Butter, apple butter from Union Nebraska that a Nebraska friend gave us, powdered sugar, and TJ’s Boysenberry Preserves review here.  To us the best one was apple butter – these balls worked good as a system to cart apple butter by the mouthful from the bowl to our mouths. 

The texture, to me, was a little weird.  The taste is good but sort of boring.  If the tasty toppings weren’t in the picture I do not think we would want to shovel these naked pancake balls in our mouths. 

They sure look cute all laid out on the table with toppings and espresso

We heard a really good story on NPR about the Danish concept of hygge.  It was a great piece and I recommend a listen, but I cannot FIND it online.  Let me just that that listening to it made us both long for more “hygge” in our lives.  I can’t seem to find the original piece we listened to but I do not want to leave you high and dry, so here is some hygge information for you:

Here is a short “Driveway Moment” piece that references hygee at 2:00 - Driveway Moment

And here is an article on the subject:  BBC news hygge article

Oh I WISH i could find a link to the piece we listened to on NPR because it was so perfect.  Anyway, the concept is the “hygge” is a word not meant to be translatable, but to be felt/experienced. 

 

Our hygge...

I bring all of this up because the term hygge is Danish, as are these pancake balls.  And in fact EATING these pancake balls while sitting in front of a roaring fire wearing your handknit sweater and heavy socks while playing Dominoes with friends could likely BE hygge!

Not expensive.  But not my favorite breakfast food in the world.  I will probably wait until I go to Denmark to eat them next :)

Back to the review:  to me these pancake balls taste like something they would serve at the Ikea restaurant, only they would be yuckier cuz the topping they served would be lingonberry… 

Price – $3.49

Rating -3