Deep-frying might be the best thing to happen to food since the advent of eating it. It’s alchemical. Formerly mundane foodstuffs—chicken, say—are dipped in batter, dunked in boiling oil and transformed into utter deliciousness.

If recent developments in deep-frying tended to be more and more gimmicky—Oreos, Snickers?!—Denny’s is to be saluted for going the other way: Its Pancake Puppies are nothing but batter, pure and simple. With none of the heavy oiliness frying can sometimes impart. The Pancake Puppies are just light balls of fried dough, which you dip in syrup—another great development in food, if you ask us—and pop down without the guilt of a short stack. Utter deliciousness.