Aebleskivers - Danish pancakes that are fun to make

I've yet to meet a child who doesn't love aebleskivers, and they're pretty popular with adults, too. They've been described as "round pancakes" - but aren't pancakes usually round? Spherical is a more accurate description.

Aebleskivers are from Denmark. When I was young, my parents occasionally took us to Solvang, a quaint town in California that was settled by Danish immigrants and where shops with faux windmills (that didn't rotate) sold butter cookies, soft pretzels, wooden clogs and traditional Danish clothing. Many bakeries and tea shops also sold aebleskivers, usually cooked in the window, to entice passers-by. I would watch, fascinated, as the cooks poured the batter into the hemisphere-shaped moulds and waited for it to set slightly before giving the aebleskiver-to-be a quarter turn, so the runny batter in the centre would fall into the bottom of the mould to cook. This would be repeated a couple of times then the spheres would be removed from the mould. Three aebleskivers would be put on a takeaway plate, drenched with raspberry jam and dusted with icing sugar, before being handed over to the customer.

They're fun to make, too (I published a recipe in Post Magazine in 2012; Breakfast with a difference: shakshuka and aebleskivers). I haven't ever seen a proper cast-iron aebleskiver pan in Hong Kong but I use something that works just as well: a takoyaki pan, which can be found in the kitchenware sections at Sogo and Apita.