When your kids just want something sweat to eat and you can't say no there are always Crepes.
Picked my youngest up from church as my oldest had to sing in a second service so my Wife was staying with her. As we were driving I asked what she wanted for lunch and she said Crepes. After a short discussion we decided on Strawberry crepes as long as the store had good strawberries, they can be hit or miss in the winter around here.
But we wanted to go all out and have a filling. Heck if you're eating desert for dinner you might as well do it right. So we decided on a lemon cream cheese filling.
This isn't a quick meal by any means. There is a lot of prep and cooking the crepes takes a fair amount of time, but it's a fun meal with the great reward of smiling kids (and my Wife).
There are 2 parts to this recipe, the Crepe and the Filling. My suggestion is to make the filling first and put it in the fridge while you make the crepes.
Ingredients:
Crepes Batter:
3 eggs
1/2 cup 2% milk
1/2 cup water
3 tablespoons butter, melted
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
Lemon Filling
1 1/4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup heavy cream, whipped
4 cups sliced strawberries
Blend the cream cheese, confectioners' sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla with an electric mixer until smooth.
As you can see the filling already tastes great and this was 100% done by my 8 year old. She then quickly mixed the whipping cream.
Gently fold in the whipped cream.
**I highly suggest putting a metal mixing bowl in the freezer along with the beaters an hour before you start cooking. This will make whipping the heavy cream much easier.
The filling is now done and can be placed into the Fridge until you are ready to use it.
Next we will make our batter for the Crepes. This is really simple and since we just dirtied up the mixer we used our blender for this.
Put the eggs, milk, water, melted butter, flour, and salt in the pitcher of a blender; blend until smooth.
Super easy, and ready to cook. I poured the batter into a measuring cup that has a pour spout to make it easy to pour into the pan. The first time you cook these I suggest using a measuring spoon and it is about 3 Tablespoons per Crepe.
The pan needs to be lightly oiled. The crepe is very thin and needs to be able to flip without ripping so can't stick at all.
When you put the batter into the pan you need to pick up the pan and tip and rotate it around so the batter spreads thinly across the pan.
Flip once the edges start to brown and the batter is set.
Cook until the other side begins to brown. About 30 seconds per side.
Stack the finished crepes to the side and cover with a damp (not wet) paper towel.
While I'm cooking the crepes my Daughter is working on the Strawberries.
Another great dinner made with the assistance of my 8 year old Daughter. She did all the measuring, mixing, and cutting of the strawberries. Then I took care of the actual cooking of the crepes and then turned it back over to my Daughter who took care of putting the filling in each crepe as I folded them.
This was probably about 30 minutes start to finish. Really the longest part is each crepe takes about 1 minute of cook time and then you need to make sure to oil the pan between each one. I made 10 crepes just in case and ruined one that went to the dog (forgot to oil the pan so it ripped in half), so this was probably about 12-15 minutes of time. Then about 12 minutes to mix everything and another 3 minutes to assemble the crepes.
All Photos are taken by thedarkhorse and all rights are reserved. Photos are taken with a Samsung S8+
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