SWEDISH PANCAKES
Most often my recipes will be based around nutrition, healthy lifestyles and/or alternative eating. However, being raised in a home where my heritage was celebrated, I learned many wonderful recipes from my Swedish grandma and my Bohemian grandma- recipes I can recite by heart a this point. So, to start things off, a taste from my childhood that has become a meal for special occasions in my adulthood.
My recipe for Swedish pancakes is hard to forget. All you have to remember is 4-3-2-1.
4 eggs
3 cups of milk
2 cups of flour
1 half cup white sugar (or less)
1 pinch of salt
1 “bloop” of vanilla extract (I added this- not from Grandma Blomberg’s original recipe)
Mix all ingredients with a mixer until smooth.
Rub butter on a hot griddle (I use frozen or refrigerated butter because it melts on the griddle- not in your hands.)
Pour batter by spoon fulls (or use a ladle) on a hot griddle set between 400-450 degrees. (You can fry them in a frying pan as well, but it’s more difficult to regulate the temperature.)
Flip once- pancakes should be golden brown (or a little darker) on both sides.
Rub butter on the griddle in between each batch of pancakes.
My Grandma Blomberg made Swedish pancakes in a cast iron frying pan like the one above. She would make one pancake at a time, and flip them up in the air to turn them. We all sat in the breakfast nook waiting patiently (sometimes not so patiently) for our turn to get that skillet-sized treat. Poor Grandma never got to sit down and eat with us, but she didn’t mind. Now that I’m an adult I understand that the joy of serving others and watching them savor your hard work outweighs the joy of eating hot pancakes when everyone else does.
While your pancakes are frying, you can decide how you would like to serve them. The “Swedish Way” (in our house anyway) was to butter them, sprinkle on sugar, roll them up and eat them with our fingers. I’ve always enjoyed putting fruit inside mine and then rolling them up and eating them with a fork. My nephew loves to wrap his pancake around his breakfast sausage, forming some kind of hybrid Swedish burrito. And of course, they’re good covered with syrup as well. Growing up, the syrup was real maple syrup cooked just down the road in “The Sugar Woods.”
If you really want to impress guests, or you just have a “jones” for cream cheese (because who doesn’t?), you can whip together 8 oz of cream cheese and a cup of powdered sugar and put that inside rolled up pancakes. Then top it with your favorite fruit compote or preserves. For real flair, top that with whipped cream! Be prepared for many “ooohs” and “aaahs” and “yums!”