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| weekend indulgence |
This post was supposed to be put up last Friday. I dropped the ball. Sorry folks. It was a good weekend... filled with family and friends and a surprise birthday celebration for my hubby.
During the week breakfast is composed of some iteration of Cheerios and milk and perhaps a cup of coffee or tea on my way out the door. On the weekends this bare bones meal get scrapped for a full on complete breakfast. Usually one morning its omelettes, toast, turkey bacon and tea. Another morning its crepes. Delicious wonderful crepes.
What? You've never had a crepe? You, my friend, are missing out terribly. Crepes are pancakes cooler, more cultured French cousin. They seem so complex and so fancy... but in reality they are just as easy (maybe even easier) than pancakes. Yes, you read that right: easier than pancakes.
Crepes are also ridiculously versatile. You can make them sweet or savory, and you can fill them with nearly anything. We eat them for breakfast. But you can fill them with some veggies and eat them for lunch or seafood salad and eat them for dinner with a side salad. You can also fill them with crushed Nilla Wafers and some chocolate and eat them for dessert. The possibilities are endless.
There are only a few ingredients to crepes: flour, eggs, water, milk and most importantly butter. From there you can customize the recipe to make the sweet or savory. I believe that if you start you day with something sweet, it will be a sweet day. So we made these ones sweet by adding sugar and vanilla to the mix. You can even make them in a blender (throw everything in the blender and turn that sucker on), which makes them RIDICULOUSLY easy, but then you need to let the batter rest for an hour so the gluten can calm down otherwise they end up chew instead of tender.
I used good old Whiskie to do the job so I could cook them right away. I find it easier to mix the wet ingredients first (the eggs, milk, water) and then add the melted butter (carefully so as not to cook the eggs) then to add in the dry ingredients (flour, sugar) and the vanilla. I am not really sure why I always add the vanilla at the end, but I do and it works out okay.
There are many methods for cooking a crepe. When I was in junior high we were taught how to make crepes in home economics (do kids still have to take that??). Our teacher taught us to pour a bunch of batter into a hot pan and to dump it right back into the batter bowl. The amount we needed would stick to the pan. This works well if you are scared of cooking crepes and getting the right amount of batter on the pan. It also is a way to cook them quick and get them nice and thin. The original
Time to get cooking! :)
Print crepe recipe
Crepes
Ingredients:
- 2 large eggs
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 cup flour
- 3 tablespoons melted butter
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Directions:
Combine all of the ingredients and whisk until just blended. The batter will keep for up to 48 hours. (you can also pulse in a blender for 10 seconds, but then you MUST allow the batter to rest 1 hour in the fridge before cooking)
Heat a small non-stick pan. Add butter to coat. Pour 1 ounce of batter into the center of the pan and swirl to spread evenly. Cook for 30 seconds and flip. Cook for another 10 seconds and remove to the cutting board. Lay them out flat so they can cool. Continue until all batter is gone. After they have cooled you can stack them and store in sealable plastic bags in the refrigerator for several days or in the freezer for up to two months. When using frozen crepes, thaw on a rack before gently peeling apart.
source: adapted from Alton Brown, www.foodnetwork.com
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