Over the weekend Justin and I had a crazy schedule. Despite this, we tried very hard to work it out to be in favor of the mothers and grandmothers in our lives. Because of our lack of time and the way the schedule worked out, I convinced Justin to help me fix a delicious breakfast/brunch for my mom and grandmother. And now I'd like to share that recipe with you so that you can make it as well! :)
Justin began with a simple idea: he wanted to make crepes for breakfast. Crepes are not my favorite so I convinced Justin we needed to find something really creative to do with them. That's when I began my search for an exciting crepe recipes. There are a lot of fantastic looking crepe recipes out there: steak with balsamic glaze, caramel apple brie, vanilla bean with peaches and creme… Justin and I were looking for something simple though. A cream cheese filling seemed to be just what we needed to fulfill my visions of crepe happiness!
Here's the recipe:
Strawberry Banana Crepes
• crepes of any kind (the one we used was from The Joy of Cooking, but any recipe will do. How about this one from Julia Child?)
• cream cheese filling
• whipped cream
• bananas, strawberries, and any other fresh fruit you want to use
To make the crepes, Justin followed the recipe combing all of the ingredients and then placed the batter in our vacuum sealer and sucked all of the air out. He let his science-ing stand for about 30 minutes. While this step isn't necessary, Justin was trying to hurry the process along; typically, in Alton Brown style, he has let the crepe batter sit in the fridge over night (7-8 hours) to better hydrate it. When it came time to cook the crepes, he poured just enough batter onto a nonstick crepe pan to cover it and waited, cooking it just like you would a regular pancake. After about a minute or so he would flip it to make sure the crepe was thoroughly cooked. One note: do be careful when flipping these paper thin "pancakes"; if they stick, you will end up with a hole in your crepe which isn't pretty. Use butter between cooking each as needed. Also, lift the pan from the stove between each allowing it a chance to cool so that your next crepe will cook evenly no matter where you pour the batter first.
After you have the crepes done, it's time to work on the filling! This part is pretty easy. The directions here provide a list of ingredients for just the filling and all you have to do is follow the last instruction in the recipe. So easy right?! The hard part is not licking all of the tasty filling before it goes into the crepes!
When each crepe is filled with yummy filling, rolled and platted, top with delicious fresh fruit and then add some whipped cream. Justin used the Sweetapolita whipped cream recipe which can be found here. It's not exactly the same but it's close. The recipe in the book calls for gelatin which makes the whipped cream more stiff to hold up against the warm crepes and heavy fruit. Store bought whipped cream would work just as well if you want to go that route. Keep in mind that this breakfast is incredibly sweet, so I recommend going light on the sugar in the whipped topping. A little goes a long way.
In total, the recipe took us about an hour and a half to cook and made approximately 20 crepes total. It was a fun breakfast and seemed like a perfect fit for the beautiful spring weather we are currently experiencing.
Even though Mother's Day has already passed, would you consider making strawberry banana crepes in the future? Have you ever made it or something similar before?
I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend! :)
