Crepes: Sweet & Savory

Neither Mark nor I are much of a breakfast eater.  We’ll do the occasional egg sandwich on a Sunday morning, but, who are we kidding, by the time we get up and organized enough to cook on a Sunday, it really could count for lunch anyway.

So who knows where my inexplicable craving for crepes came from the other week.  Or why I was up and ready for cooking hours before Mark got out of bed, but the stars aligned for Mark to wake up to a crepe breakfast. 

I used Alton Brown’s recipe for crepes because it was among the first to come up on Google.  I may have been awake enough to try out a new recipe, but not awake enough to dig out the cookbooks and look for recipes. 

Crepes – Sweet & Savory

Batter (according to Alton):

• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup flour
• 3 tablespoons melted butter
• Butter, for coating the pan

*I divided our batter into two: one for savory fillings, to which I added a little salt and other seasonings, and one for sweet fillings, to which I added a tablespoon of powdered sugar

You can add any fillings you’d like.  We used:

Savory:

Ham (I used leftover thick-cut lunch meat)

Shredded Gruyere (leftover from the greens casserole from the last post)

Sauteed red pepper strips

Sauteed mushrooms

Garlic

Chopped green onions

Sweet:

Homemade blueberry compote

Ricotta cheese mixed with a little powdered sugar and lemon juice

Powdered sugar for the top.

Combine all the batter ingredients in a blender and pulse.  Refrigerate for at least one hour.  While the batter was chilling, I got the fillings ready.  You can really add anything you'd like.  Since this was spur-of-the-moment crepe making, I just dug through the fridge.

After the batter has chilled for an hour, I divided into two and added salt and herbs to the batter I was going to use for the savory crepes, and a little powdered sugar to the sweet batter.

Heat a small non-stick pan over medium-high heat and add a pat of butter and swirl it to coat as it melts.  Add about a small ladle-full of batter.  I used a rubber spatula to loosen the edges as it cooked for about 10-30 seconds, then flip and cook for another few seconds.  

I added the fillings just before it was done cooking so they could warm back up and the cheese would melt.  Fold and carefully move to a serving dish.  That's it.  These were so much easier than I would have guessed.