La petite biscotte Now in Munich…

Crêpes for dummies

Whatever the occasion, crêpes are simply always popular. They can be made quickly, in large quantities and can serve as savory dish as well as dessert. The crêpes in the above picture are filled with ham, grated cheese and mushrooms.

Some people confuse crêpes with pancakes but they are actually very different. Crêpes are almost as thin as a sheet of paper and mostly they are way bigger in size than a pancake. They are almost always served with a filling.

Now I’m often told that making crêpes is very difficult and that the result varies a lot. Common issues are:

• Clumps in the batter
• Batter sticks to the pan easily
• To prevent this a lot of oil/butter is often used
• Using a laddle, it is very difficult to dispense the batter equally over the frying pan so the whole surface is covered
• Crêpe breaks when one tries to flip it

Luckily I’ve gone through a lot of trial and error (while eating a lot of crêpes :D) and I discovered an amazing method that will allow you to make perfect crêpes, easily, every time.

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 400 ml milk (lukewarm)
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp salt
• 250g all purpose flour (perfect would be very fine flour which is made for liquid batters)
• 4-5 Tbsp vegetable oil

Preparation

1. Mix eggs, milk and salt in a Blender. Gradually mix in flour and vegetable oil. Blend well until you see no clumps anymore. Now add some of the water until the batter has the consistency of thick pouring cream. Scoop off the foam if there is any. Keep the batter in the blending container.
2. Use a paper towel to coat a flat skillet with vegetable oil (if you have a crêpière, even better). Heat up the skillet over medium-high heat. Wait until the pan is hot.
3. Remove the pan from the heat by lifting it. With the blending container quickly pour in as much liquid as you need to cover the whole surface. Pour back excess batter into the blending container.
4. Put the skillet back on the heat. As soon as you see that the crêpe is golden brown at the bottom, flip it. If your crêpe breaks easily, the batter was probably too liquid. Add a little more flour to the batter in that case.
5. If you are preparing a savory crêpe, add cheese and other fillings now on one side of the crêpe. Fold it in a half and make sure it’s golden brown on both sides. Remove on a plate.
6. Continue this way. Maybe you’ll need to reapply a little oil at some point but usually the oil in the batter is enough to keep them from sticking.

Useful Tips

• You can add a little butter too the batter to improve the taste.
• You can make the batter 2 days in advance and refrigerate it. Just bring it back to room temperature before cooking when you want to use it (and reblend a little).
• You can seperate crêpes with wax paper to keep them from sticking.
• Crêpes can be refrigerated in a plastic bag for 3 days.
• Crêpes can be frozen in a plastic bag for 3 months.
• To reheat crêpes, place them in an oven on a cookie sheet at 170°C.
• Ideas for fillings: Grated cheese, ham, mushrooms, all sort of vegetables, a fresh egg (yolk), Gorgonzola or Goat cheese. Sugar, cinnamon, chocolate, ice cream, nutella, fruit, marmelade, jam, peanut butter, maple syrup etc…