food – 2nd Avenue

The Great Round Pancake Taste Test

Pre-made æbleskiver (round Danish pancakes served at Christmas) in a baking dish

If you’ve been in Denmark around Christmas, you’ve almost certainly eaten æbleskiver. These pancake-like globes are ubiquitous at Christmas markets and frequently paired with gløgg (Scandinavian mulled wine).

Using a buttermilk batter, they’re cooked in spherical pans and flavoured with cardamom and lemon zest. For those of us without the necessary cooking equipment or desire for home-baking, they’re also widely available in supermarket freezers. Inspired by Epicurious’ Taste Panel series, I decided to taste-test (and rank) as many premade æbeskiver as I could get my hands on — with surprisingly uninspiring results.

Can bread pudding save the world?

Despite being a carb-loving family, we frequently aren’t able to get through a loaf of bread before it goes stale or, even worse, starts to grow green stuff. I hated throwing away the last bits of gluten-filled goodness and started stashing leftovers in the freezer. The most obvious solution was to transform those bread cubes into bread pudding, which I love—especially topped with a creamy, buttery, boozy sauce!—but opportunities for a decadent dessert proved few and far between. Inspiration hit and I tried turning regular, sweet bread pudding into a main-course-worthy dish. Voila savoury bread pudding, also known as strata and more commonly served for brunch.

Hiding from the heat and eating flatbread

Zürich is having its second heatwave of the summer and it’s making me more than a little aggravated. I am not a fan of hot weather. (That’s an understatement!)

Weather in Zurich: Wed 8:20, sunny and 24.6°C — Almost 25°C before 8:30 in the morning!

Thankfully, this round of high temperatures isn’t quite as extreme as the +40°C days and 22°C nights we had back in June. And most of Europe is seeing the mercury climb, so I can take comfort in the fact that I’m not suffering alone—but I’ve still become somewhat obsessive about keeping our flat cool.