The recipe for a successful day is a great breakfast, and breakfast crêpes are the best kind of breakfast you can have and they are many people’s favorite breakfast thing.
Making them is easy, and making them as they make them in Paris will have everyone around you fighting over the last crêpe, because let’s face it, everyone knows a good thing when they taste it.
What you need to know about crêpes and about making them
The easiest crêpe recipe uses flour, sugar, eggs, milk, vanilla, and butter.
Fillings vary according to taste and preferences, but usually can include anything from fresh fruit to chocolate spread, jam, marmalade, honey, dulce de leche.
In France, people have their own crêpe recipe passed down from generation to generation, so in France you may see crêpes being made differently from one person to another.
Crêpes take a little while to make, hence it makes a world of difference to have someone who is fast and efficient making them for you, preferably someone who is French.
You can freeze crêpe batter for later use. Place any remaining batter in an airtight container and defrost overnight in the fridge when ready to use.
You can fill crêpes with savory fillings and feel free to try as many flavors as you want. Queso fresco is a people’s favorite.
It’s important that you measure the ingredients for the right consistency of batter to get those paper-thin pancakes.
It’s also important that you use a nonstick pan, the best you have.
Let’s make some crêpes!
What you need:
- 2 cups of all purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 6 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 3 cups of milk
- 4 tablespoons butter
How to make:
- Sift the flour, then add the sugar and salt and stir with a whisk. Notes: 1. the sugar helps golden the crêpes, but if you’re making savory pancakes, skip it. 2. make sure you don’t skip the salt because the salt provides flavor to the crêpe.
- Make a well and add the eggs to the flour all at once. Stir with a wooden spoon until you bring all the ingredients together. Using a spoon instead of a whisk will make stirring a lot easier, as the batter is very thick and difficult to handle at this point.
- Loosen the batter with just a little bit of milk. When you’ve incorporated all the flour, the batter should look much smoother and almost have the consistency of a wetter bread batter.
- Melt and cool the butter, then add to the mix.
- Grab a whisk and start pouring in the milk, a little at a time, stirring the whole time. Make sure you incorporate all the lumps.
- Just before you add the last milk, pour in some flavor, in this case the vanilla. You can flavor with orange blossom water, rum, lemon or lime zest, almond extract etc.
- Finally add the rest of the milk, then a little bit of water or beer to make a lighter batter, about a quarter cup.
- Let the batter sit and rest for approximately 2 hours. It helps develop the gluten and it will make your crêpes much softer.
Note that the batter is usually thicker after it rests, so make sure you add some water to loosen it up.
Set a nonstick pan to medium-high heat, add butter, then add batter and start swirling around until you cover the pan in one thin layer. It may take you a few crêpe tries before you get the right one. Repeat until no more batter.