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.
The first hurdle was keeping them frozen. Our freezer has a measly two drawers, with barely enough space for an ice cube tray in the lower one. Far before the tasting could begin, I needed to clear out space for multiple packages of æbleskiver. Farewell ice. Hello dough.
The second challenge was sourcing an adequate variety. When I pitched the article to my editor at Last Week in Denmark, our closest grocery store had six in stock, including vegan and gluten-free offerings. There were only two options when I went back to fill the tiny freezer drawer. And then there was a fire at our closest store (police suspect an 8-10 year-old boy 😳) and it’s been closed for weeks.
I persisted and cycled further afield (and sent Tony to a Lidl, his absolutely least favourite grocery store) and wound up with thirteen options from nearly as many brands.
Tony and I had fond memories of æbleskiver from our first Decembers in Copenhagen and our hopes were high. But the initial three options were surprisingly flavourless and unpleasantly stodgy. Things did not improve.
While literally translated as ‘apple slices’ (a throwback to the original sliced, battered and fried method of using up apples that were past their prime), æbleskiver no longer have anything to do with apples. And they could have used the flavour and texture oomph from fruit. All thirteen varieties (including one with a chocolate cream centre) were blandly pancake-like. Very little taste of their own, with buttermilk notable in only a few (ØGO in particular) and lemon or cardamom undetectable in most.
In addition to Tony gamely sampling nearly all thirteen varieties (despite proclaiming that he was done with æbleskiver by the six insipid tasting), I did a head-to-head sampling with a fellow Canadian transplant to Denmark and Last Week in Denmark writer. Emily came over on a Sunday morning and we sipped Christmas tea, chatted about growing up in the Lower Mainland and relocating to Copenhagen, and nibbled our way through thirteen æbleskiver before declaring joint winners. See the article for our verdict.
While Emily and I crowned victors amongst supermarket æbleskiver, none of them are destined to be part of my Christmas repertoire. I’m happy enough peck at the doughy balls if they’re offered in a social situation, but will sit out this Danish tradition at home. There are way better baked goods available and we’re spoiled for choice when it comes to bakeries — although I should probably keep quiet about preferring vin chaud blanc (like the mugs we sampled in Strasbourg) over Scandi gløgg.
Yum yum, I want to go to Denmark at Christmas time and join the next tasting. They sound delicious to me