Crepes

Sweet, delicious crepes.

1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
1/16 cup water
1/8 tsp salt
1 tbsp butter, melted
1 packet vanillin with sugar (substitution for 1 tsp vanilla extract)
2 tsp sugar

Mix all ingredients except flour together thoroughly. Slowly stir in flour and mix until larger lumps are gone.

I like to use a plastic ladle about three quarters full to portion batter onto a hot nonstick skillet or griddle. The batter will not spread out enough by itself, so I use the bottom of the ladle to spread the batter around in an outward swirling pattern resulting in a six to eight inch diameter circular crepe. Cook this on medium until it becomes possible to separate the crepe from the pan with a spatula without damaging the crepe. When you turn it, it should have a whitish color with traces of golden brown. Add toppings and fold crepe into desired final shape – I like to fold it in half twice to end up with a triangular shaped crepe. Serve hot.

My favorite filling for crepes is cheddar, although I have made excellent crepes suzette before. However, in Georgia, due to the difficulty in obtaining exotic foreign cheeses and liqueurs, I simply use Nussa – a German chocolate hazelnut spread, like Nutella except even more delicious – or shavings from a Russian milk chocolate bar with the brand name “корона.”

I think I made about five or six crepes with that batch, and I gluttonously ate all of them. Perhaps I should have found some fruit preserves to be a little healthier…

I couldn’t find pure vanilla extract here, either, but the supermarket did have these packets of “vanillin with sugar” by a Turkish company called Altin. I don’t have Turkish character support now but that’s supposed to be the un-dotted i.

I’d love to get some kind of meat and cheese crepe going at some point, but those things are so (comparatively) expensive here that I’m probably going to have to wait until my next paycheck comes. Maybe I’ll make a big batch of crepes for my birthday, which comes right after payday (specifically, on November 3rd).

All in all, these crepes were very easy to make, very delicious, and used mostly cheap ingredients. I think with this addition to my Georgia repertoire, I’ve got breakfast pretty well covered and am really getting into the groove of cooking for myself on a regular basis.