Is there a more versatile recipe than the French crêpes? I would say no, and for this reason, I am not presenting one or the other, but instead, I am sharing the Basic Recipe for Sweet or Savory Crepes ready in minutes thanks to the tips and tricks of Gaia! This time, I called my friend to come to my house for dinner, and then we prepared the crepes together with this recipe!
If you’re wondering why, the answer is very simple. I had a savory crepe recipe from my mother, who often made them for her restaurant to vary the choice of main courses. She filled them with fish and they could become crepe lasagna or filled crepe cannoli. Various toppings from main courses with tomato to those without. She was a true artist in the kitchen. However, I always had great limitations with both sweet and savory crepes.
Do you remember the story of the Cinnamon Christmas Cookies? Well, if you’ve seen the video, you surely know that I lose patience very easily, so when the first crepe sticks to the pan, the second one is full of holes, the third turns out hard, I just throw everything away and call it a night as my mom Roberta used to say.
Here’s where Gaia comes in, she offers to give me her crepe recipe, I invite her to dinner so she can bring her recipe and we’ll make it together in my kitchen! We plan, I buy those 4 simple and inexpensive ingredients and prepare dinner. Then we arm ourselves with a bowl, a hand whisk, a small ladle that you can see in the short video below, and a non-stick pan of 8.66 inches.
I can now say that I understood my mistakes, where I was going wrong in the preparation of homemade sweet or savory crepes. The trick is all in the batter, which must be smooth and homogeneous and above all fluid, not hard and with lumps. In short, of the right consistency, and these quantities are precise to the milliliter and gram. Gaia surely knows her sweets, and I hope we can also steal her Recipe for the Biscuit Dough Roll, which she makes super good with dough that never breaks!
Let’s move on to the little curiosities surrounding this homemade crepe recipe. Let’s start with the names they can have:
– crepes
– crepe
– crespella or crespelle
– crêpe from French
All these names always and only identify the same preparation and the same recipe. That is, “golden and soft sheets”, super thin, which can be used in the sweet version or the savory version. All you have to do is choose from the various toppings you can think of and you’re done. Crepes are perfect to enjoy all year, just think how good they are with vanilla ice cream and fresh fruit in summer or super delicious ones with hazelnut or pistachio cream and hazelnut crumbs. My mouth is already watering, and I can’t wait to make them again and again!
Let’s play a game, if I say Crepe, what do you think of? My answer is: Jardin des Tuileries, February 2009, my mother and I in Paris were discussing whether to enter the Louvre, I had already been there, she never. I wanted to go in, she wanted to sit in the sun in this beautiful French garden. I see a stand of only and exclusively Crêpes. I propose to visit the Louvre after making her taste the best French Crepes! Of course, as the sweet tooth that she was, she agreed. I paid for three Crepes with Nutella, and after 10 minutes, we were in front of the Venus de Milo.
What ingredients came to your mind? Let me know in the comments under the recipe or on the social channels you prefer. You can find them all linked below the recipe! For me, the best will always be the Crepe with Nutella because I hold this memory dear. I must admit, though, that the breakfast a few weeks ago with raspberry jam, almond flakes as filling, a nice dusting of powdered sugar, and a drizzle of honey was super delicious.
I recommend listening to the short video you find below, it’s not the video recipe, but I reveal two tricks and give you a tip to best achieve sweet or savory crepes ready in minutes with simple steps to follow. As I explain in the video, you can then freeze your homemade crepes easily to enjoy them whenever you want. Do you want the perfect ladle for crepes like mine? Buy a ladle of 2.36 inches, those really small ones you always think aren’t necessary. For crepes of 8.66 inches, that ladle is the perfect amount of mixture for each single crepe. Mine is from Tescoma, and you can buy it by clicking here.
Crepes are close relatives of Pancakes; from this family (what a happy family it must be) also come gaufres, known by the more famous name of waffles. For this reason, below you will find the crepe recipe in its savory version and the two pancake recipes found on my cooking blog Le Ricette di Bea! Don’t forget to try my porridge recipe, a real treat!
- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Very economical
- Preparation time: 5 Minutes
- Portions: 10 crepes
- Cooking methods: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: All seasons
- Energy 116.45 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 12.38 (g) of which sugars 1.36 (g)
- Proteins 5.02 (g)
- Fat 5.61 (g) of which saturated 3.13 (g)of which unsaturated 2.48 (g)
- Fibers 1.97 (g)
- Sodium 30.80 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 60 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients for 10 Sweet or Savory Crepes
- 2 eggs (at room temperature)
- 1 1/4 cups flour (previously sifted)
- 1 1/16 cups milk (whole or semi-skimmed at room temperature)
- 2 tbsp butter (only to grease the pan, cold from the refrigerator)
Make sure to sift the flour well, this will prevent lumps from forming in the crepe batter.
Tools for Preparing Sweet or Savory Crepes Basic Recipe
- 1 Bowl
- 1 Hand whisk
- 1 Pan
- 1 Scale
- 1 Stovetop
- 1 Ladle
There is no salt in my recipe because it’s the basic recipe for Parisian Crepes, but if you want to make savory crepes, just add 1 gram of salt to the batter during preparation.
Steps of the Basic Sweet or Savory Crepes Recipe
We start the preparation of the Homemade Crepes by taking a scale, weighing the flour, and sifting it. We choose a nice wide bowl with tall edges for this recipe. Let’s also get a hand whisk. If you don’t have one, you can conveniently purchase it by clicking here.
Gaia’s Trick: milk and eggs must be at room temperature.
Then weigh the indicated amount of milk and start. In the bowl, break the eggs and work them with the whisk until they become nice and frothy. Now incorporate the milk by pouring it in a stream and not all at once. With a spoon, gradually add the flour. You will have to balance the ingredients; the mixture must be fluid and homogeneous. It should not be lumpy and hard. Now that we have obtained our mixture, we can proceed with the relative cooking of the crepes.
Take a non-stick pan and grease the bottom with cold butter from the fridge. Gaia advises greasing the edges and bottom well, then if the pan’s temperature is correct, you won’t even need to grease with butter for cooking all the others. Let’s arm ourselves with a 2.36-inch ladle and start. I recommend “using” the first to understand if the medium flame temperature of the pan is correct and if you have greased its bottom well. Pour one ladle at a time, rotate the pan at least twice to distribute the mixture well on the bottom, and place it on the fire. You will see, as for pancakes, the classic bubbles forming on the surface, which is the signal that the crepe should be flipped to the other side.
Gaia flips them with her fingertips; I used a steel spatula that I use for plating, as I didn’t trust my fingers in the hot pan. Nonetheless, flipped, the crepe will have the beautiful golden color of those you can buy from kiosks or at Christmas Markets. Let it cook for a few seconds on this side too, and then let the crepe cool on a nice wide plate. Continue cooking until the batter is finished. We obtained 10 golden and thin French crepes.
I then let the Parisian crepes cool before storing them in the freezer. I already knew I wouldn’t be using them immediately because I had other recipes to prepare in the following days. Below, in fact, I also explain how to do it, and you can find the audio explanation in the video below the initial photo. All that’s left is to wish you bon appétit and remind you that I’m waiting for you on my recipe site’s social channels. Every morning on Le Ricette di Bea‘s Facebook fan page, there’s the Good Morning and Recipe of the Day to discover together.
The perfect ladle for homemade crepes? You can find it by clicking here.
Can I Freeze Sweet or Savory Crepes?
Of course! And in the short video above, I explain how to do it. First, let the crepes cool at room temperature. Then take a nice freezer bag, one of those wide and flat ones (like those from Ikea, click here) and place a piece of parchment paper between each crepe. This will prevent the crepes from freezing stuck together and will allow you to separate the number of crepes you want to use, one at a time, without waste. Isn’t that perfect? How to defrost Parisian crepes? Take the crepes you want to use and place them in the fridge to defrost. If you want to use them for breakfast, do this step the night before going to bed. The same applies if you are using them to prepare a main course for lunch. Allow the necessary time to defrost without excessive temperature changes. Please remember! If you want them soft like fresh, this step is very important!
And if I don’t want to freeze homemade Crepes?
If you don’t want to freeze the Crepes, remember that with this recipe, you will get about 10 crepes with a diameter of 8.66 inches; you can store them in the refrigerator, always closing them in a plastic bag with a piece of parchment paper between each one. Of course, after letting them cool at room temperature.
