Flavors of Denmark: Æbleskivers

You may know that I’ve set my sights on creating a friendship city with Billund, Denmark.  I realize it’s not a frivolous task, but I like a community building challenge, and this certainly is one.  This one would be very advantageous to me, personally, because Billund is where The LEGO® Group is headquartered.  And everyone knows that I’m a LEGO® kind of mom.

I don’t expect that a friendship with Billund will be built in a day.  After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.  We have to start somewhere, and today that somewhere was Orange, California.  There I volunteered for the Danish-American Society’s booth at the Orange International Street Fair.  I met folks from three Danish communities: The Danish Scout Troop, The Danish American Society and the Danish Lutheran Church in Yorba Linda.  Together they (and I) were supporting the Danish community at the Danish Cultural Center of Southern California.

I met several adults and youth of Danish heritage, including someone who lived just outside of Billund!  You might know that Billund only had a population of 6,194 residents in 2014.  It’s tiny when compared to Long Beach, which has half a million residents.  So the chance of finding someone actually from Billund, this far from the city itself, is very tiny.  So I’m counting the folks with Danish heritage that I’ve met so far, and today I doubled or tripled the count!

I made Aebleskivers.

Flavors of Denmark: Æbleskivers

When you plan a trip, you decide where you will visit, the cultural and historic destinations.  Most certainly you’ll look forward to exploring the food.  Today, that food was Æbleskivers.

Tip #0/ When you get your pan started, it will take some time to heat up.  Use a little bit of batter on a skewer or your turning fork and test the oil to see if it’s frying temperature.

Tip #1/ Oiling the Pan.  Use cooking spray to coat the inside of the Æbleskiver pan wells.  Then add a few drops of oil in each of the wells.  The cooking spray will ensure that you can slide the cooking pancake around and make the round shapes.  The oil will add flavor and color.

Tip #2/ Make sure the pan is sufficiently hot before you add the batter.  If you don’t, you won’t be able to turn the pancakes.

Tip #3/ When you pour the batter, fill each cup to the top.  Try not to let drips connect any two cups.  It will make it difficult for you to turn the individual pancakes.

Tip #4/ You can use a special fork to turn the pancakes, or you can use a fondue fork.  If you have long, bamboo skewers, you can use one or two skewers to nudge the pancake out of the pan and turn it slowly so that it creates a sphere.

Tip #5/ You don’t want to make your pancakes like Pac-man.  No one wants those, although we did have some discussions that Emoticon pancakes might be fairly popular and sell for a higher price than the Æbleskivers.  Except… we couldn’t control the specific flaw, and we might get too many angry and sad emoticons, and not enough happy ones.

Tip #6/ The final tip.  Make sure it’s fully cooked by putting the skeweer all the way through and pulling it out to see if there is any uncooked pancake residue on it.

I looked online for the specific pan I used, but I couldn’t find it.  I’m sharing with you here, the Norpro pan for making Æbleskivers which is reasonably priced and comes with many good reviews.  I’m also including some fancy tools for turning and some simple bamboo skewers.  The pan and baking tools are untested by me, but the reviews are very good.  Your purchase through these links will provide me with a budget to keep moving forward in my mission.  It occurs to me that this particular pan can be used to make a number of dishes from different cultures.  Japan comes to mind, but I can also think of Indian applications.

At this point, I should share that I asked a few people about Billund, and the pastor of the Danish Lutheran Church and Danish Cultural Center of Southern California was previously the pastor of a church just outside of Billund, Denmark.  She will help me! How about that! I can’t wait to tell Friend Mary!

Watch Friend M. showing me how to make Aebleskivers.

I have another, very cool video that I also took yesterday.  It warrants its own post.

I am a creativity facilitator and a community builder in Long Beach, California.  I love a community building challenge, and I work to support socially responsible entrepreneurship through a game I created in 2012.  I call it The Community Lemonade Game.  It has evolved to be a framework of Simple Guiding Principles for interaction with and support of each other for mutual benefit.  I am trained in and a practitioner of LEGO® Serious Play and Creative Problem Solving.  I run a Maker community called Makersville and another community called Brickersville in Shoreline Village in Long Beach.  Brickersville is a training site for socially responsible entrepreneurship and The Community Lemonade Game. Please subscribe to Squigglemom.net!

Read more about the first playing of The Community Lemonade Game.

Register for training in LEGO Serious Play.

Register for training in Creative Problem Solving (Coming soon).

I will call this the Billund, Denmark version of The Community Lemonade Game.