Easter Egg Aebleskiver

When planning an Easter breakfast to be devoured while eagerly anticipating the egg hunt to follow, I thought of aebleskiver, these delicious pancake balls that rather resemble little eggs.  

Inspired by this analogy, I prepared some apricot yokes (softened in a little vanilla syrup), coated with cream cheese whites,

which we cooked into pancake batter shells and finished with a dusting of powdered sugar. The eggs, with their tangy, runny whites surrounding sweet and chewy yokes, were as delicious as any of the treats left by the Easter bunny. 

Easter Egg Aebleskiver

makes about 21 aebleskiver

batter

1 cup buttermilk

1 egg, separated

1 tablespoon melted butter for the batter, plus more for the pan

1 cup flour (I used a combination of pastry flour and hard white wheat spring flour, both from Camas Country Mill)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

filling

21 dried apricot halves

¼ cup water

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 tsp sugar (divide use)

½ cup cream cheese

powdered sugar for garnish

1. In a small sauce pan, combine ¼ cup water, 1 tsp sugar and 1 tsp vanilla extract. Warm over medium heat for a minute to dissolve the sugar, then add the apricot halves and simmer for about five minutes until the apricots are tender and have absorbed the vanilla syrup. Allow the apricots to cool.

2. Prepare the batter. Whisk together the buttermilk, egg yoke, and melted butter. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Whip the egg white. Now gentle stir in the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until they are just combined and fold in the whipped egg white.

3. Combine the cream cheese with the remaining 2 tsp of sugar. Use your fingers to coat each apricot with cream cheese and reserve on a plate.

4. Heat an aebleskiver pan and butter well. Fill each of the cavities to about 1/2 the height with batter. Then place a cream cheese coated apricot into the middle of each dollop of batter and top with a little more batter to cover and fill the well. Cook for about a minute. With a skewer tip the dumpling to one side so that the cooked half dome is perpendicular to the pan and cook for another minute. Now catch each dumpling on the corner between the first half dome and the second half dome and rotate this to the top, so that the least cooked face of the dumpling points downwards. Keep rotating the dumplings for a few more minutes until they are golden brown on all sides and cooked through.

5. Transfer to a warmed plate, dust with powdered sugar and enjoy at once while you start the next batch cooking.