Product Review: Pancake Puff Pan

Late night infomercials can sometimes be ridiculously tempting. No matter how useless or flimsy the product is, somehow at 1 am, it's easy to convince yourself that you need it. Most of the time, by morning you've realized the error of your thinking.

But as embarrassing as it might be to admit, after watching ads for the Pancake Puff Pan, we didn't have those same morning realizations. Instead we kept thinking about how soft and fluffy a round pancake must be. We imagined the lemon curds and chocolate ganaches we'd fill them with. Any any thoughts of "no single use gadgets in our kitchen!" were banished by convincing daydreams of savory hors d'oeuvres and intriguing combinations.

But would it really work? That was the question that was finally answered this morning, after we were gifted the Pancake Puff Pan by a friend.

An extensive testing process (read: several batches of basic pancakes, some of which were then filled with raspberry jam) yielded promising early results.

The heavy cast iron pan has 7 divots, and there's no need to pre-season. Pour in your batter, wait for it to brown and start to bubble on the top, then use the included wooden sticks to gently turn each puff over. A few more minutes, and they were ready. Pretty easy, once we got the hang of how much batter to use (nearly full) and how to flip the puffs (gently, and quickly.) We filled up the included injector gun with raspberry jam, and filled them without any fuss or mess.

The puffs were golden brown, and soft. Just as we'd imagined, they were not unlike a freshly made doughnut, yet without the frying and extra fat.

There were some negatives:

• The pan is quite small. It's only the size of a salad plate, which means that one batch makes only a large serving for one person. Those hors d'oeuvres we dreamed about will take quite a long time to put together.

• The accompanying directions are pretty brief. Our first puff was disappointingly small, and not brown enough, because we'd followed the products terse directions. Though the commercials show using firmer ingredients like sausage in the middle, there are no directions for doing so. A injecter gun helps you add jelly, but sausage will need a bit of trial and error.

For those of you who are looking at this pan and saying it looks familiar, it's not unlike the dutch aebelskiver pan. We've heard that many of those pans need to be pre-seasoned, and can be tricky to remove the pancakes without sticking.

Whether you call them pancake puffs or aebelskiver, we think these things are delicious!

Related: Word of Mouth: Aebleskiver

Comments (13)

my husband and i love that infomercial! we especially love that the basic wooden skewers they include are called 'flipping sticks.' every time we see wooden skewers at the grocery store we exclaim 'flipping sticks!'
i've never been tempted to purchase the pancake puff maker, but they do look yummy...
i love that you posted a review of it!

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in japan there are similar pans for takoyaki and it looks like a fun process because you just spill batter all over the entire surface and use sticks to fold the batter over back onto the balls. a swift wrist movements flips it over and with continuous flipping they're perfect little spheres.

these are savoury though and have octopus in them, hence the "tako" in the name.

I've seen these at Target recently and was curious as to their effectiveness compared to a true aebleskiverpande (which I must point out is Danish, not Dutch!)

I actually lugged a heavy, expensive pan from Roskilde, Denmark to the states years ago. If you go to Denmark, aebleskiver is popular as a kind of walking snack at places like Tivoli (or the Roskilde Music Festival, in between bottles of Calsberg).

It's a fun treat to make when having guests over (especially nice to wake up to).

I've seen similar griddles for flat little Chinese pancakes, but the griddles are at least the size of a small bistro table. They're filled with vanilla custard or bean paste.

Indeed, that looks like an aebleskiver pan. The Dutch do have something similar, but they are smaller and flatter, sort of lentil-shaped. They are called poffertjes and are made with half wheat and half buckwheat flour, and with yeast. Poffertjes are served with powdered sugar and butter, and sometimes a sprinkling of liqueur.

I lugged a cast-iron poffertjes pan to the States. But in the Netherlands, the grocery stores sell packs of pre-made poffertjes so I'm not sure people make them at home very much. They are work-intensive to make.

When we went to Holland we tried these and they were called Poffertjes. They were wonderful but not filled with anything. Just plain with powdered sugar and syrup.

When I saw this commercial late at night I thought "Oh, that's just a poffertjes pan...how silly to try to sell them with 'flipping sticks'". Then I thought "mmmmmmmm poffertjes" and thought about ordering one.

I've never seen that infomercial, but it is exactly the same as an aebelskiver pan. They do take time to make, just like pancakes or waffles but are pretty tasty. My family puts the oil in the center to keep it hot and brush it in each "divot" every once in a while. Really once the pan is decently seasoned you don't need that much oil. My mother sprinkles powdered sugar on them sometimes and we always serve them with jam. It's interesting to see a traditional dish repackaged on an infomercial.

In Denmark you'd turn them with a knitting needle, not a flipping stick.

Can i just say those look SO GOOD, but this is a girl that just gave away my wafflle maker becuase as much as i love eating them i hate fussing over the pan.

abelskiver! yum....
pan was passed down from husbands grandmother.
no one knew what the heck it was for and when i exclaimed abelskiver.... they said it was yours! this was at his grandmother's house closing, and i was watching a lot of food network!

it's cast iron and tricky.... first batch sux. just like pancakes, then... everything is good! strawberry rhubarb jam is the best! and then sometimes blueberry jam!

syrup is good too!

Hi there, I accidently stumbled up on this review. The pan you talk about and see in the picture is a Danish apple pancake pan. A Dutch 'poffertjes' pan has either 14 or 19 divots. There's a poffertjes batter mix on the market, and all you need to ad to it is water (maybe milk too, but I'm not sure. It's been a while since I used it). Anybody who is interested in purchasing such a pan can google 'poffertjes pan' and it will come up with lots of stores where they can be ordered on line, as well as the mix in several cases. Usually the poffertjes are served with melted real butter on top and powder sugar. Some additional drops of rum make it even more yummie. Be creative! They are fun to make and kids love em... as well as adults as far as I'm concerned. Have fun and enjoy this Dutch treat! :-)

Hmm...I wonder if I can be a cheapskate and replicate this with an egg poaching pan...