Crepes with sauteed banana and chocolate

I don’t know about you, but I worry about that pending heart attack that’s waiting patiently around the corner. Some of the most loved bakers out here (such as Joy the Baker) and food celebrities (ahem, Paula Dean), have declared their love for butter, sugar, and just about everything else the FDA says not to eat. Me? I’d love to be less stingy in using those ingredients, but I’m not blessed with those invincible genes that all those bakers seem to have.

So it snowed this morning. Again! The weatherman wasn’t too off base this time. We got a good 5 inches of snow in when I woke up. The thing that I love about snow is that it’s a great excuse to sit at home and bake or cook.

Last weekend, I saw an episode on Everyday Food (that’s on PBS, not Food Network) where they made crepes and I said to myself, “Geeze, Jessie, you’ve never made a crepe. You should make one soon.”

And so I did.

Crepes aren’t much different from making pancakes except the timing is a bit more critical. Because the batter is much thinner and runnier (crepes are by nature very thin), if you get distracted for even 10 seconds, you might just end up burning your crepes. Now I’m no expert here. But the guy on Everyday Food said that perfect crepes don’t have color. I guess that’s a fail on my part. Mine browned up a bit, but it was still delicious all the same. Honestly, it could have come from the Max Brenner kitchen for all I knew…

These crepes are possibly one of the simplest breakfast foods to make. I made the batter the night before (which literally took like 5 minutes!) and set it in the fridge. You’re supposed to chill the batter for an hour or up to a day, so I figured that I’d make it ahead of time and eat breakfast right when I woke up. But if you don’t chill it for that hour, I’m not sure what’d happen. The ceiling certainly won’t collapse (hm, maybe the crepe would though).

I halved the original recipe and substituted buttermilk for milk and diluted it a bit with water. Buttermilk is supposed to be tangier, but heck I couldn’t tell the difference. Then again, I suppose I could only compare if I had a crepe made from milk…

THEN, I omitted the butter and brown sugar. That’s right, this recipe is BUTTER FREE and BROWN SUGAR FREE and I lived to blog about it. The following recipe makes around 4 crepes with a small skillet or 3 for a regular sized skillet. I even had some left over to make savory crepes!

Crepes with sauteed banana and chocolate
Adapted from Everyday Food
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Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
• 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 large egg
• Canola spray
• 1 banana, peeled and sliced
• 1 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted

Recipe:

And onto the cooking…

1. I have only one skillet, so first I made the crepes. Spray the skillet with the canola oil spray. If you must, you can use a teaspoon of butter
2. Ladle a layer of batter so that you get a very thin coat (original recipe says 1/3 cup of batter). Quickly swirl the skillet so that the batter is evenly coated.
3. Cook the crepe until edges are try and start bubbling.

Loosen with a wide spatula, and using both hands, grip edges with fingertips and quickly turn over. Cook 1 minute more. Slide onto sheet to keep warm. Repeat with remaining batter.

For the folding- it couldn’t get any easier.

For the sauteed bananas and melted chocolate-

1. Spray the skillet with canola oil (or 1 teaspoon butter) over medium heat.
2. Add bananas (and brown sugar if you want); cook, stirring occasionally, until bananas are lightly browned on one side, about 3 minutes.
3. In a microwave, heat the chocolate in a bowl in 30 second intervals. When the chocolate is still a bit lumpy, take it out (it should take only a minute or a minute and a half). Furiously whisk with a fork until the rest of the chocolate is melted.
4. Plate the bananas onto the folded crepes and drizzle the chocolate with a spoon!

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• Phensri’s “Fantastic” Thai New Year’s Party
• Baked eggs with coarse dijon
• Semi-homemade angel food cake strawberry trifle
• Poached egg with Sriracha mayo
• Sweet red bean ebelskivers