Norpro Cast Iron Stuffed Pancake Pan, Munk/Aebleskiver

Works great on an induction cooktop, seasoned in oven at 400 using crisco for one hour. Pam spray in between batches had no sticking.

Bite sized pancakes, biscuits, and all that jazz. Even stovetop brownies are a breeze in this thing. Then I took it to the next level and started stuffing these things with all kinds of goodies. Like bacon, jelly, bacon, cream cheese, bacon, chocolate chips, and oh yeah… and bacon!!! I’m sure there are other things you could stuff in there, but I’ll stick with bacon.So this thing comes to us unseasoned and in and unusual metallic silver finish. Lovely right? Okay so like all new cast iron items go ahead and blast it in the oven. I suggest not going over 500 degrees. If you can dedicate a good 12 hours to this thing then by all means do so. If you buy it in the winter go ahead and do this process during the day if you’re at home. It will keep your kitchen and other surround areas warm. Just like in the olden days. And you can cut off the heat to save a few cents for the day. You can do the 12 hour round or you can break it down into 3 four hour sets. Let this thing cool overnight after each round. It’s gonna change color. It won’t turn black, not just yet like your great grand mama’s, but it will eventually. It will be a deep amber/brownish color. Now rub the whole thing in a cooking oil of your choice. Meaning the top, bottom, and handle. Oil needs to be on every exposed surface. Make sure it’s something with a high smoking point. I suggest safflower oil which is usually sold at most supermarkets and not too expensive. Toss it back in the over for a few hours. 3 or 4 should do it. Let it cool and take it back out. Now the destructive part… Get a brillo pad or a steel scouring pad and scratch the tackiness from inside the cooking area. You could scratch the entire pan, but only the cooking surface is necessary. Over time the tackiness, if there is any left at this point, will only quicken the darkening process of the pan. Oil the scratched surface and put it back in the over for another 4 hours and cool it down. Do this two more times and the pan will be safe to use. You won’t have that metal taste or black flacks ending up in your food.When cooking with this apparatus, make sure your pancake or biscuit is cooked on the edges before rolling/flipping it over. Using a chopstick or a fork will do the trick. With brownies let them cook a little longer unless you like fudgy insides. Also if you’re trying to stuff your items with bacon or a filling of your choice, do so before flipping. You can push hard fillings down into the batter and flip. When adding jellies and creams, add a small dollop of batter on top of the filling and then flip.After you burn a few or let a few come out doughy, you will learn the range of the pan and what temperatures work best with which kind of food. There are only 7 spaces, but for the most part things cook up really fast. You’ll have a whole mound of goodies sooner than you think. Have at it people!

It took a while to arrive. I was excited when I received it but it didn't last long. First it did not look like any other cast iron that I own. Even though it does weigh as heavy as cast iron, it looks too gray than any cast iron. So I washed and applied oil generously and started cooking in it. After a few minutes of heating it just started with weird fumes with a weird burnt plastic smell. Still I tried to make the first batch because I thought it was the oil coating I had applied. But it just kept fuming and giving off that plastic chemical smell and I didn't want to use it anymore. I washed it thoroughly and seasoned it again and still gives off that yucky plastic smell and it definitely is not like the usual cast iron. It's still the same gray as when it arrived and I own so many cast iron pots n pans which I have seasoned on my own and this is nothing like it. I doubt if it's cast iron or if some other non stick coating was applied during manufacturing itself because my first batch I cooked just fell out of the pan, literally. No sticking nothing. I have never had a cast iron that did that on the first use and even after several washes there's no rust and it still smells the same when I heat it. I need to return it and either get a new one. Hopefully that'll work better.

Before ordering I read a lot of the one star reviews on this item. I ordered the item anyway, because I had a hunch about what was going on. When it arrived I did find one downside. I was buying this for the recipe in the products name, but also for making takoyaki (a Japanese dish). The depressions in this pan are a little big and not circular enough to make picture perfect takoyaki.That said, most of the one star reviews involve either food sticking or the product rusting after the first cleaning.I am convinced this is because the people giving the reviews do not know how to season and care for cast iron. As the instructions on the packaging state, you must season this pan when it arrives. There are numerous sources on the internet that tell you how to do this. It amounts to heating the pan up until lard liquefies and smokes when you put some in it. Then you rub the whole thing down with oil, watching as it turns a dark color before your eyes.Then, to clean, you don't wash it like a normal pan. If you leave it wet, even seasoned, it will rust. Look up on the internet how to care for it.This is not a 1 star pan. Its small in overall size. The depressions are pretty big. Its priced to its size. The pores in the cast iron are not very big. It seasons nicely. I've included a picture after my initial seasoning.

We have a lot of house guests, and these little tiny pancakes are absolutely amazing. Our housekeeper felicia is an amazing cook, and there's nothing better than waking up in the morning, with the smell of cooking pancakes on the gas stovetop. The best we have made in this is chocolate chips.

This ebelskiever or takoyaki pan has 7 depressions to pour your batter into. It's a decent, not too heavy, cast iron pan, with no coating, which is exactly what I was looking for. But for the dish I was looking to make, which is an Indian dish called nei appam, the indentations need to be round; but the pan is flat bottomed. Eh, you think, what difference does the shape make? I kind of agree in principle, but in practice, it makes a huge difference, because it looks as if the dough doesn't/hasn't rise/risen, and each piece has fallen, like a fallen meringue. Then, because it is not super heavy, the batter sticks no matter how much you grease the pan, or cook with extra oil (ugh). And then you have to soak the darn thing to get it clean. While the item itself is OK, I find I am unable to use it. :(