So, my parents sent me my first poffertjes pan.  Having grown up eating them every weekend and watching my father tirelessly cook them as well as being a father myself and making my own pancakes, my thought was, “how hard can this be?”

Turns out, pretty hard.

The first step when making poffertjes is to learn how to spell poffertjes.  A quick Google search for “Dutch pof” had me cursing the fact that I have not already installed NetNanny on the computer.  A few wikipedia searches later and I found it: poffertjes (pour-fet-jess).  Now comes the real trick when making anything in our family: whatever the recipe says, you have to make it without: milk, eggs, soy, onion, nuts, fish, guacamole or any of their closely related siblings.  Basically, find the first ten recipes you can, as well as the carefully curated family recipes handed-down through generations and laugh at how easy they had it, then go in search for egg-substitutes* and which yogurts don’t use milk.

Our new stove has a great griddle burner in the middle perfect for the pain pan.  The trouble is we didn’t have “a squeezy thing.”  If you don’t eat your butter (or can’t) from a tube and seem to think you can forgo this step of being able to carefully squeeze the pancakes into each slot you get this:

photo 1Not that appetizing, but the pan looks nice!  I was smart enough to know that you spray the pan with PAM first.  Not bad for my first -eggless attempt (Wifey reminds me that she does not think the eggless part had anything to do with it, to which I respond the mix could have been more runny and … shutup).

My second try got better:

photo 2As I got better at dolling out the mix properly in the holes and learned how far down to push the fork to flip them.

The final result?  They tasted great even if my Opa is rolling over in his grave right now and the evidence by the empty plates says it all.  Dad comes next week, so I am ready for pointers.

photo 3* Egg Substitute from Ama: 3 TBLS ground flaxseed , 1/8 tsp.  baking powder, and 3 TBS water.

** poffertjes recipe eggless used:

1 cup wheat flour
1 cup buttermilk ( i took 1/2 cup greek yogurt + 1/2 cup water )
2 tbsp raw sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon pwd
1/4 tsp soda bi-carb
1 tsp butter
1/2 tsp salt