A recipe for some very simple, very delicious crepes.

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1.5 cups milk
2 eggs
1 tbsp cooking oil
a dash of salt

Combine all ingredients with an electric mixer. It's okay if there are some lumps of flour in the batter, but since this is a much thinner mixture than pancake batter, try to get as many out as you can.

Put a 6 inch or so frying pan on the stove, just long enough to get it hot. Spray it with cooking spray, remove it from the heat, and spoon some batter into the pan. Rotate and twist the frying pan until there's a thin layer of batter over most of the bottom. Return it to the heat and cook until done. You'll be able to tell that it's done by watching the color of the batter change from whitish-yellow to brownish-yellow and by the appearance of a few bubbles. Turn the finished crepe out of the pan onto a plate covered with a paper towel. Repeat until you run out of batter, re-spraying the pan every few crepes.

Makes about 15-20 crepes.


I was very pleased with this recipe. It is very easy to make, very hard to ruin (unless you leave out the cooking oil, as I did earlier *thwap*), and comes out of the pan so easily that there's almost no mess to scrape out when they're finished.

Crepes are good with fruit wrapped inside them and sprinkled with powdered sugar. You could also put some sort of meat in them, if you wanted. And I've heard they're good with caviar. Exceeding versatile, these French pancakes ...

This recipe by katycat is a great jumping off point for making crepes. However, two changes would make the crepes into the something sublime.

The first change would be to substitute the cooking oil with 2 tablespoons of browned butter. The browned butter will serve the same lubrication purpose as the oil and it will lend a very pleasant nutty flavor and a great brown color to the finished product.

The second change would be to mix the batter in a blender to make it completely smooth and then to let it rest for 30 minutes before using it. Resting the batter will allow the flour, eggs and milk to rise to room temperature and to completely mix. The best time to add the browned butter is after it has cooled a bit, and the batter has been resting for 15 minutes.

Lemon crepes

Some time ago I ate crepes, made by a French friend of mine. They were absolutely amazing! The batter was very thin, and because there was a large amount of egg in there, the result was very thin crepes that still came out of the pan whole. And she put in lemon zest, which made them very special.

She gave me the recipe and it is as follows:
Take 15 tablespoons of all-purpose flour, a pinch of salt and 7 glasses (about 1 liter) of milk and mix them well. To avoid lumps, the best way is to start with the flour, make a small hole in the middle and, while you keep whisking, slowly pour the milk into the hole. That way, you constantly take away a small amount of flour from the sides of the hole and you get no lumps.

Then, whisk 5 eggs in a different bowl. Add them to the batter and mix well. Zest a lemon and add the zest to the batter. Keep the lemon! You can use it later. Finally, melt 30 grams of butter and mix this through the batter as well. Leave the batter for half an hour before you start cooking.

First, take a cooking pan, put in some water and bring it to a boil. Keep the water simmering and put a plate on top of the pan: the plate will stay hot and keep your crepes hot while you're cooking the rest.

To cook a crepe, heat a frying pan or crepe pan (preferably well-seasoned or non-stick) and add a small amount of butter. Put the heat at its medium setting. When the butter has melted, pour a small amount of batter into the pan. Two or three tablespoons full should do it, you should have just enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan. Don't pour in batter until the bottom is filled though! Tilt the pan to let the batter flow over the bottom. That way you use less batter and get thinner crepes.

When the upper side of the crepe is completely solid, the underside should be nice and golden brown. (If this is not the case, adjust your heat accordingly. If the underside is black, your fire should be lower, throw the crepe away. If the underside is still white-ish, cook it some more and turn up the heat. It doesn't matter if you first crepe doesn't turn out well, this is traditional.)
Flip your crepe over and cook the other side for a few minutes until it is golden brown as well - sneak a peek to see if it's ready.

Put the finished crepe on the heated plate. Repeat until all the batter is gone.

These lemony crepes taste great with both sweet and savoury fillings. With cheese, for example: when you have flipped your crepe, melt a few slices of cheese on top of it, then fold it in two so the cheese won't stick to the next crepe on the plate. The crepes also taste good with blueberry jam. The best version, however, is with powdered sugar and a bit of lemon juice.

Mmm.

shaogo has this to add: "The crepes you describe are absolutely divine with a filling of Provencal herbs, wild mushrooms, and halved escargots (you can either do them Nouveau (little sauce) or in Bechamel (all the butter and twice the calories!!!). Serve with a lovely Gruner Veldtliner from Austria and you're on your way to heaven!"

Crepe (kr?p), n.

Same as Crape.

 

© Webster 1913


Crepe (krap; Eng. krAp), n. [F.]

Any of various crapelike fabrics, whether crinkled or not.

Crepe de Chine (&?;) [F. de Chine of China], Canton crape or an inferior gauzy fabric resembling it. --
C. lisse (lEs) [F. lisse smooth], smooth, or unwrinkled, crape.

 

© Webster 1913

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