Lemon Ricotta Pancake Puffs

These are a Danish concept also known as ebelskivers. They are small pancake puffs that can be filled however you would like. Or even use the pan with corn bread or cake batter or even brownie batter. I have a small inexpensive pan, which is a cast iron pan that has 7 indentations in it (see the picture above).

So after having it for over a year, I decided that I should take the pan out of the package and give it a try. I started out using a buttermilk pancake recipe and added a lemon ricotta filling. For the filling, I took part skim ricotta and added some lemon zest, a little lemon juice and some sugar to sweeten it up. I didn't use any specific proportions, I just kept adding one thing or the other until I got to a flavor I was happy with.

I oiled the pan and placed it over medium-low heat. I added just batter the first time around to get a feel for how it would cook. I added waaaay too much batter, it took forever to cook on the one side and didn't seem to cook all the way through when I flipped them over.

That lesson was learned: do not fill the chambers completely.

Next batch I added less and put some of my filling in the center and topped it off with a little more batter. This went a bit smoother, but I still seem to be overloading the wells. I can't believe just how little batter each one of these needs. The cooking process still took a while, and with my impatience, I turned the heat up over medium.

Which, of course, led to the next batch being too dark. The bottoms almost burned before getting cooked through.

Lesson learned: be patient and leave the temperature lower!

By the time I started the last batch, I started to get the hang of it a bit better. I can't believe that one buttermilk pancake recipe resulted in almost 50 puffs! They tasted fairly good warm, but was a bit soggy when eaten at room temperature the next day.

So my final opinion is still mixed. There seems to be some potential for some interesting combinations, but it took over an hour to cook the entire batch. Is it worth all the time needed to make these? I haven't decided yet. They need to be baby sat nearly constantly to prevent burning. So it isn't like pancakes where you can walk away briefly. Maybe I will come up with some flavor combination I am dying to try and will give this pan another shot. Only time will tell...