Apple Oladyi: Ukrainian Pancakes with Grated Apple and Cinnamon

Name: Apple Oladyi: Ukrainian Pancakes with Grated Apple and Cinnamon
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 305 min
Yield: 2
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Ripe apples 3-4; Egg 1; Milk 100 ml; Wheat flour 250 g; Sugar 2-3 tbsp; Vanillin, cinnamon, baking powder, salt to taste; Honey, mint, apple for serving

For as long as I can remember, I've loved oladyi, small fried pancakes, whether with apples, zucchini or pumpkin. The simplest version is kefir oladyi: a plain thick batter fried in small portions in vegetable oil. The batter has no fillings at all, but the finished pancakes get a generous topping of sour cream, jam, honey or condensed milk.

Unlike crepe-style blini, oladyi are small and thick. Baking powder, baking soda or even yeast often goes into the batter to make them fluffy. Pancakes made from grated vegetables, like zucchini fritters, don't come out very thin anyway.

As a rule, oladyi are made with some kind of add-in. Chopped or grated fruit, berries, raisins and so on are stirred into the batter. Thin blini, on the other hand, are usually served with a filling rolled up inside. A big hit in our house is chicken crepes, which are nothing more than thin blini wrapped around a tasty filling of chicken and fried onion.

When people make apple oladyi, they usually mean that chopped apples go into the batter. Blini or crepes with apples, on the other hand, are most often filled with apples after they're cooked.

The line between blini, crepes and oladyi is often hard to draw. Many agree that with similar recipes, these dishes differ more in shape and size than in ingredients and technique.

Let's make simple apple oladyi from an easy egg and milk batter with fragrant vanilla and cinnamon. For the add-in, we'll take a few ripe, sweet apples. Getting ahead of myself: the more apples end up in the batter, the tastier the pancakes. Ideally you taste only the apples, not the batter. And don't be shy with jam, honey or sour cream: it's heavenly.

Ingredients

2 servings

Ripe apples 3-4
Egg 1
Milk 100 ml
Wheat flour 250 g
Sugar 2-3 tbsp
Vanillin, cinnamon, baking powder, salt to taste
Honey, mint, apple for serving

Step-by-step recipe

Any oladyi, whether apple ones or fluffy milk pancakes, are made from a pourable batter. As a rule, it's a very simple batter: flour, egg, milk and sugar. All the prep comes down to mixing the ingredients and frying small portions of batter in hot oil or in a dry pan. The pancakes turn out amazingly good when you stir chopped fruit or berries into the batter.
Crack the egg into a deep bowl and add half a cup of cold milk. Add vanillin and cinnamon to taste and 2-3 tbsp sugar. I should say that apple pancakes can be as sweet as you like, within quite a wide range. You can add sugar to the batter even after mixing, just give it a little time to dissolve.
Mix the egg, milk, vanillin, cinnamon and sugar with a mixer or any other way. The wet base just needs to be smooth, not creamy or “whipped.” Also wait a few minutes for the sugar to dissolve.
It's hard to say exactly how much flour you'll need, since the juicy apples will add a good deal of liquid to the batter. Roughly, you'll need up to 1 1/2 cups of flour, about 250 g by weight. Sift the flour. Mix the sifted flour with baking powder, using the amount on the package. I bought a sachet meant for 0.5 kg of flour, so I needed half a sachet. Add 1/4 tsp fine salt to the flour.
Add 1 cup (130 g) of the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly. Keep adding the flour in small portions, mixing all the while. You're aiming for a batter as thick as very thick honey that still flows.
Before you start frying, get a few good, sweet apples ready. Peel and core them just before adding to the batter. Peeled apples brown very quickly in the air, so don't prepare them in advance.
Coarsely grate the peeled apples or finely chop them with a knife, ideally a ceramic one. If the apples are very juicy, squeeze out some juice by hand. Add the grated apples to the batter. A small aside: you can use more apples than the recipe says. The more apples, the tastier and juicier the pancakes.
Gently fold the apples into the batter and, if needed, add a little more flour so the pancake batter is fairly loose, like light sour cream. The batter should drip off a spoon.
Pour vegetable oil into a frying pan and heat it. If the oil has a smell, heat it a little longer and the smell will go away. That said, refined oil is best for oladyi. Scoop up the batter with an ordinary tablespoon and drop a portion into the hot oil. One spoonful, one pancake. You'll get perfectly sized round oladyi.
Turn the heat down to medium-low and fry without a lid. They take roughly 4-5 minutes per side.
As soon as the underside is golden, flip them with a fork. By the way, lots of people insist you should use spatulas, tongs or special gadgets instead of a fork. I tried; it's awkward, and the oil splatters everywhere. A fork is much handier and, most importantly, safer.
Flip the pancakes and fry until done. That's plenty of time for the batter to cook through. Transfer the finished pancakes to a plate and let them cool for a few minutes.
Arrange the pancakes on a serving plate. Drizzle with honey, preferably a light one like acacia or linden. If the honey has crystallized, it's fine to thin it with 1 tsp boiled water. Garnish with a sprig of fresh mint and thin apple slices.
If you like, dust the pancakes with powdered sugar, pour jam over them or top with any fresh fruit. Serve the oladyi hot, but not scalding.
If you like, you can use other fruit instead of apples. You can also stir finely chopped mint into the batter, which works especially well if you're using kiwi. And any oladyi are delicious with sour cream, and simply top-notch with condensed milk.