There are some people who don’t follow a recipe; they just mix the basic ingredients (flour, egg(s), milk, butter, sometimes also sugar and rum) and add milk until the dough is liquid enough.
I am not part of these people, I need a recipe to follow when I am baking. For years, when I wanted to make crêpes (at least once a year on the 2nd of February for “la chandeleur” (Candlemas), the crêpe day in France), I followed the first recipe I could find on the internet or a recipe given by a friend or a family member. the crêpes were always good but none of these recipes really made outstanding crêpes. I have a small booklet where I write the recipes that I make again and again, and, to write a recipe in it, it has to be “approved” by myself, none of the previously mentioned recipes made it.
However, this chandeleur, I finally found my final crêpe recipe. When I search for a recipe, I always try to find a blog, because, most of the time, the person writing hundreds or thousands of recipes in a blog gives better recipes than Mr or Ms Everybody who writes one recipe in his/her life on Marmiton, 750g or such websites.
Anyway, maybe the recipe I found is not the best recipe for someone else, but it reminds me of my Grandma’s crêpes. She used to make a lot of them and gave them to my father so we could eat them in the evening. Before the end of the meal, my parents would bring some water to boil in a saucepan and put the plate with the crêpes on it to warm them. They were very thin and soft, and so good!!! I made this new recipe without high hopes but when I tried my first crêpe, it all came back to me and I decided that it would be my crêpe recipe from now on. I wrote the recipe in my little booklet, it’s approved !
If you are curious and want to try by yourself, here’s the recipe:
Ingredients (for 2 persons):
300 ml of semi-skimmed milk
1 vanilla stick
50g butter
3 eggs
20g sugar
1 pinch of salt
125g flour
1 teaspoon of rum or orange blossom extract (or aroma)
Put the milk in a saucepan. Cut open the vanilla stick in two and scrape the seeds, put everything in the milk.
Heat the milk (no boiling), add the butter and let cool down.
Beat the eggs and sugar, add the pinch of salt.
Add this mix to the flour then add the filtered milk/butter/vanilla mix while whipping.
Add the rum or the orange blossom extract (or aroma).
If it seems too thick, you can add a bit of milk (it was not needed when I tried the recipe).
Heat your pan and put a knob of butter before cooking the first crêpe.
Pour the dough in the pan in a thin layer (you can watch a video if you are not sure how to do it) and turn the crêpe when the first side is cooked (it should easily come off the pan at this point).
You can eat each crêpe as you remove it from the pan or stack them in a plate with aluminium foil on top to keep them warm.
Then you just have to savor them with the topping(s) of your choice: hazelnut paste, powdered or icing sugar, jam, lemon juice and sugar, melted chocolate…
