Recipe of the Week: Ebelskivers

Growing up, every Christmas my family would drive to central Utah to spend the holiday with my grandparents. On Christmas Eve we would drive around looking at lights, exchange gifts with my Grandpa, and wait for Santa. Santa visits most houses on Christmas Eve, but he would actually stop for a visit at my Grandma's. He would give us little presents and we'd tell him what we wanted him to bring us that night. It was the highlight of the evening.

{chatting with Santa in front of my Grandma's piano on Christmas Eve in about 1984}

After laying out milk and cookies for dear old Santa who returned while we were sleeping, we would settle in for our long winter's nap while the adults stayed up to chit-chat.

My parents had a rule that we could not open presents before 7 AM. That does not mean that we were nestled in our beds until the appointed time. I got up several times on Christmas morning to check the time and finally at 7:00 I would wake-up my siblings and we'd all go together to wake-up our parents. My mom and grandma would get right up, but my dad liked to torcher us and take as long as possible until even my mom would start telling him to hurry.

I loved Christmas even more than I do now and wanted the anticipation and excitement of unwrapping all my gifts to be drawn-out as long as possible. I would always start on my stocking first, which actually had a lot of great gifts in it. My parents still make fun of me because I would never get super excited like the other kids and I was very methodical about the whole thing.

{slowly opening my gifts on Christmas morning}

While we were busy playing with our new toys, Grandma would make breakfast, which included (per my request) ebelskivers, which are a Danish pancake-like ball, my Dad's family is from Denmark and this is one of the few things passed down from the old world. So good! We had actually received an ebelskiver pan for our wedding from my Dad's cousin and had made them out of pancake batter before I found out I had Celiac, but hadn't made them since.

Since I didn't have my grandma's recipe I used one I found on-line and substituted Jules GF flour. We used this recipe from SugarMama Baking Company exactly {except for the flour}.

Ingredients: 

• 2 eggs, separated
• 2 cups buttermilk
• 2 cups {Jules GF} flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tbs. sugar
• 4 tbs. Melted butter

Directions:

Separate eggs; beat egg whites until stiff. Mix all the other ingredients together at one time and beat until smooth. Fold in egg whites.

Heat pan on low to medium heat. Put 1/2 tsp. butter, oil or shortening in each cup. Pour in batter near top but not filling cup. If desired, put 1/2 tsp. of jam, a piece of pineapple, blueberries, raisins, etc., in batter. (If fruit is added, reduce the amount of batter initially placed in cup. Add fruit and cover with a small amount of batter.) When bubbly, turn ball with a fork or skewer. Continue cooking until toothpick comes out clean. Serve warm with powdered sugar or syrup.

The batter was so light and fluffy and the end result was just as I had remembered it :D While I doubt I'll hire my neighbor to dress-up as Santa on Christmas Eve, I decided that making ebelskivers is a great tradition to carry on in future Christmases.