How to make our crepes

One might assume that making French crepes is as easy as pie. Eggs, flour, butter, milk, throw it all into a pan and… all set! Maybe. But how much of each ingredient? How thick the crepe? What about the cooking time? And sugar – do we have to add sugar?

As a matter of fact, the above are all sound questions. And that is exactly why the perfect French crepes recipe is not quite as easy as it seems. In the kitchen, just like in life, even simple things require time and effort in order to obtain the best results. Otherwise, even the slightest imprecision can spoil the result.

Our guests know it well: at the Hotel Corte di Gabriela we commit to preparing things with our own hands, genuine ingredients and an unrestrained care for taste balance. With a special treatment for aesthetics. Because appearance matters, too.

Here’s the recipe for our crepes, either sweet or savory:

2 egg yolks

200 gr flour

Just a little less than 1/2 lt of milk

30 gr butter

Pinch of salt

And now on with the preparation:

Take the flour and sift it. Add the stuffed eggs, a pinch of salt and dilute it all with milk, ideally kept at room temperature. Heat ¾ of butter for 10 seconds in a microwave or bain-marie and pour it into the dough, mixing until a smooth and uniform consistency is obtained. If the mixture is too thick, you may add another drop of milk. Conversely, add some flour if it is too liquid.

Let the mixture rest for ten minutes so that it becomes homogeneous. Meanwhile, preheat a non-stick pan and grease it with what is left from the amount of butter. Be careful not to overgrease it, or the crêpes will turn out to be way too buttery for any taste.

When the pan is hot enough – and you can tell by dropping some dough in it – we’ll pour the dough little by little with a ladle. Note that the amount of dough for each crêpe is about 5 tablespoons.

Here comes the fun: the cooking.

On a very low flame and in a pre-heaten hot frying pan, a crepe will be ready to be flipped after about one and a half minute. Don’t wait any longer: if that’s the case, you may flip it again when the other side turns golden. Now you may ask: how to flip a crepe? Well, that’s up to you and your crepe flipping skills – which we unfortunately can’t teach you through a recipe! Our advice is to just try. And within a few crepes, you shall succeed.

Last, but not least, the stuffing. Since you haven’t added sugar to the mixture, the great thing is, your crepes will taste extra yummy with either ham and cheese or jam, marmalade, nutella or whatever your creativity may suggest. As for us, we like it better with honey, brown sugar and lemon, or apples and a sprinkle of cinnamon.

Enjoy!