Mise en place for sweet crêpes.
My Mexican friend Heidi has inspired me with her food styling and photography and we recently got together to make and style crepes for La Chandeleur with my new cast iron Le Creuset crepe plate – I know, how indulgent!
Ingredients:
1-3/4 cups/225 g buckwheat flour (also labelled sarasin in supermarkets)
1-3/4 cups/225 g all purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups/500 ml milk
2 cups/500 ml water – it was a little bit much
1/2/110 g butter, clarified
Fillings:
12 eggs, an egg for each galette
250g Emmental cheese (we used the President brand) grated
90-120g of parma ham
100g Parmesan cheese grated
Batter:
Measure then sift the 2 flours into a bowl and add the salt. Make a well in the center and pour 1 cup/250 ml of the milk into the well. Whisk the milk into the flour, forming a smooth paste. Whisk well for 1 minute, then add the remaining 1 cup milk in 2 batches, stirring well after each addition. Cover and let the batter rest at room temperature for 30 to 40 minutes. Stir in the water and beat again for 1 minute. If necessary, beat in more milk until the batter is the consistency of light cream. Stir in half of the clarified butter.
Clarifying butter:
We took the short cut and put the butter in a bowl in microwave for about 5 mins watching it closely so it doesn’t brown. Leave it to cool and settle.
Heating the crepe plate:
Heat the pan for about 5 mins. Drop some batter on the hot iron plate or pan, when hot enough they should set at once. Use a ladle and ladle one portion onto the pan and as quickly as possible use the crepe tool or baking scrapper knife to turn your wrist clockwise to spread the batter. Be quick as when it sets unevenly, you get an uneven galette.
*Note that with Le Creuset’s iron plate, it took less than 2 mins for the plate to heat
We ran out of time to make separate skins for our sweet crêpes, Mr chef made those a few days ago Robuchon’s recipe. Here for fillings, we had strawberries, and vanilla sugar.
Everything styled by @heidileon, and all photos here were taken by me (check her blog and you’ll see the difference!)
Here’s one of Heidi at work chasing the light, with sunset hour round the corner.
Once I perfect how to make crêpes, I’m going to make jianbîng 煎饼 – one of my favourite Beijing breakfasts and then Kuih Kapit or what we call loveletters in Singapore that we eat every Chinese New Year! Recipe is very similar to crepes but with coconut and egg in the mix. I found an old blog post of me flipping crepes for La Chandeleur three years ago in Beijing.
