My first—and for the longest time only—experience with crepes came when My Parents would occasionally throw parties for their friends. Everyone would get dressed up and have cocktails and eat all sorts of tasty treats. I never attended these parties, mind you. But I'd enjoy the leftovers, and my favorite leftovers were the crepes My Mom would make on her old crepe maker (yes, there is such a thing), fill with ice cream, freeze, and serve with homemade hot fudge sauce. Heavenly. And, I thought, something only to be bothered with for very special occasions.
It wasn't until I was in college that I realized crepes weren't reserved only for the sweet—and that some of the best crepes are actually the savory ones. (That's also when I learned how to actually pronounce crepe, so thanks, Little Diplomat!)
Yet until today I never even considered the possibility of actually making crepes myself—at least, not without My Mom's handy crepe maker. And I never in a million years thought that making crepes could be so easy.
Then I stumbled across a recipe for buckwheat crepes on the Gluten-Free Girl website. (Yes, they're gluten-free, but that's beside the point.) They included a video showing how easy crepe-making was. Little Man sat patiently on my lap and, enthralled, watched the video with me. That's when we decided we were having crepes for dinner.
Just like that. No big menu-planning. No dinner party-throwing. No agonizing over technique. Just, come on, let's make crepes for dinner.
And you know what? Crepes are easy to make. I'm not saying pretty crepes are easy to make, as mine definitely are not. But they're easy to whip up. Milk, eggs, buckwheat flour, a dash of kosher salt. That's it. I didn't have coconut oil, as the recipe called for, so I used butter instead, and it worked just fine. (But you don't want to do 2 tablespoons all at once. That first crepe was ... uh ... buttery, to say the least.)
To keep things simple, Little Man and I had ham and cheese crepes for dinner. As you can see, he was a fan (though he pulled everything apart and ate the ingredients separately ... lovely).
For dessert, I may or may not have indulged in a crepe slathered in peanut butter. Just because I could.
Now that I've stopped thinking about crepes as something only trained French chefs (or lovely mothers looking to impress dinner guests) whip up, I'm imagining endless possibilities. Sweet, savory, you name it.
However, I do plan on making some homemade ice cream soon, so re-creating My Mom's fabulous dessert crepes may be on the agenda first.
