January Breakfast

Come for breakfast! It’s a January Saturday morning and it's snowing. The coffee is beckoning Monks for breakfast. Not the Trappist or any other variety of that sort, but little Scandinavian pancake balls known as Monker, Äbelskiver, or Swedish pancakes. Äbelskiver refers to the particularly Danish preference for putting bits of apple in the center. Sounds yummy, but I think I’ll just make them plain today, if one can call anything “plain” that has cardamom in it. Part of the fun is using my new cast iron pan with seven round wells in it. I seasoned it when I first got it, and now I finally get a chance to see whether it will cook balls or just igloo-like domes. The batter is pale yellow and breezy with the egg whites folded in. And they smell amazing.

The batter is still runny enough to run down inside each depression when you turn them over, and then it puffs up to meet the rest, making a ball, not an igloo. Delightful. The recipe calls for dusting them with icing sugar, which would make them prettier, like snow makes winter prettier. Having no icing sugar, I opted for maple syrup, to go with my Canadian bacon. There isn't much sugar in the recipe, so the extra sweet isn’t overkill.

I linger briefly over a crossword puzzle, but must rush off to teach makeup lessons, the bane of my life these days. My roommate calls on my way down the stairs that she hopes my students bring me presents. I just hope they show up!