☼ chefs of the high peas ☼

fruity pancake puffs

April 16, 2010 at 6:16 pm (breakfast, by eileen, vegan, vegetarian) (apples, breakfast, muffin tin, muffins, pancake, pancakes, puff, strawberries)

strawberry pancake puffs! tart and tasty!

It’s a morning of a day on which you are blissfully free from work. You stretch out in bed, untangle yourself from the embrace of [beautiful person] with whom you collapsed in exhaustion the night before after a night of doing whatever it is people do the night before they don’t have work. (Was it the ultimate Smash Bros. Brawl showdown? Or did you go out and get yourself kicked out of a convenience store again? You don’t even remember, do you). Then it hits you … you’re starving. You crave the tart taste of fruit in combination with something sweet.. crisp yet smooth.. What do you do?!?!

Fruity pancake puffs, that’s what. Born from such a morning as above, after I had just read about aebleskivers (and really freaking wanted some), but had no aebleskiver pan… these pancake puffs are a quick and easy way to sweetly and crispily carry fruits to your mouth in a breakfast-like manner. They have nothing to do with aebleskivers, except that they are why I put pancake batter into a muffin tin. Sometimes you gotta cut corners by .. creating .. corners .. dangit I need an aebleskiver pan.

Anyway the puffs were great. Recipe after the jump..

Items:
- 1 cup flour
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 tablespoons baking powder
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup milk (I use 2% but you know how it is.. the richer the better) – to make this vegan, use soy milk. I don’t personally prefer this recipe with soy milk, but it works..
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- chopped fruit of choice
- caramel for drizzling/serving – we use the starbucks caramel sauce they use for caramel macchiatos.

If chopped fruit of choice is apple, here’s how to do caramelized apples:

- cube 1.5 granny smith apples (or other tart apple) into pieces approx 1 sq cm each side
- melt 1 tbsp butter and 3-5 tbsp brown sugar in pan over medium heat
- when caramelishness forms, dump in the apples, stir well, leave it on medium heat for a bit – it will get runny as the apple juice renders from your cubes, but just keep stirring
- when the apples start to be softer (but not mushy), take off heat.

apple puffs! these were the first attempt at fruity puffs.

Method:
- Preheat oven to 360

- Combine dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt), whisk/stir together

- Add wet ingredients to the dry (milk, oil), whisk together until all dry ingredients are wet and smoothish in a batter-like consistency. Don’t overmix.

- I personally like to let the batter sit for a few minutes at this point – I don’t know what it is but the batter seems to firm up or … do …. something. (Maybe nothing) but I just like it better after it’s sat for a few minutes. This is a good time to get your muffin tin ready – spray it w/ whatever it is you use, or rub it down with butter or oil. I like those silicone muffincups – spared me having to excavate the puffs out of the tin after baking.

- Spoon batter into prepared tin – probably 2 heaping spoonfuls each. Scoop a heaping spoonful of fruit into each cup. Drizzle remaining batter over the fruit bits.

- Bake for 20 minutes, then kick the temp up to 385. Bake for another 20 minutes. (I do this because I don’t want a scorched outside with gooey insides, but the last 20 minutes at 385 are to give it the crispy shell all around).

- Let cool if you can wait, pluck out of tin, drizzle with caramel, and nom.

enjoy!