The first time I tried crêpes was in a junior high romance languages class. We studied French, Italian and Spanish and students had to demonstrate a recipe from one of those areas. As a kid, I preferred pancakes. The crêpes just seemed, well too crêpy and floppy. It wasn’t until recently that I began to really enjoy them and all the creative variations–sweet or savory.  

Some recipes are easy to memorize the ingredients for and this is one of them. When I was doing advertising for a cooking school the owner told me the difference between their school and others was that they taught skills that could be applied to many recipes.

So, this recipe is sort of a take on that idea. You can adjust how many you make depending on the size of your crowd. 

There are just four ingredients. You combine equal parts of your favorite pancake mix and milk. Two tablespoons of butter per 3/4 cup of mix and milk and one egg per 3/4 cup mix and milk. You should combine liquids first and then add them to the dry mix. Some pancake mixes even have a recipe on the box. The recipe I follow is from a Food Lion Blueberry Complete Pancake & Waffle Mix.

If you’re cooking for two, for example, you would combine 3/4 cup of mix and milk, two tablespoons of butter and one egg.

Double the recipe if you’re making them for three or four people. So, you’d combine 1 and half cups of mix and milk, four tablespoons of butter and two eggs.

Then, you add a little butter to the pan, pour the batter into a skillet just like you would pancakes, wait until you start seeing bubbles and flip.

The filling can be as easy as adding your favorite preserves inside, then rolling them up, to more elaborate creations like a combination of Nutella, graham crackers, caramel and anything else you like thrown in that would be appealing to you.

Recently, I’ve enjoyed making savory crêpes filled with a cucumber, tomato and feta cheese salad–Like the picture below. You can purchase a prepared salad or make it yourself. Generally, the salad consists of equal parts chopped cucumber and tomato, green onions, a sprinkling of feta cheese on top then dousing it with oil and vinegar and adding salt and pepper to your liking. I topped them with homemade hummus from the cookbook Easy Elegance from Fabulous Fairholme [This is a recent favorite cookbook of mine. All the recipes I’ve tried so far have been ones I’d make again, and like the title says, they’re pretty easy].

I finished with a couple pieces of arugula. I think splashing more oil and vinegar dressing over the hummus would really make this one you’d want seconds to. Easy right?  Now it’s your turn to experiment. Enjoy.