Friday Food #24: Crepes

I'm not a fancy or an elegant cook, but I can put a good meal in front of a family relatively easily most nights of the week. When I get too tired Mark cooks or we go out. Sometimes Mariah even cooks, and I keep meaning to encourage that. But the fact is that I like to cook, so it's usually not a big hardship.

But I do get bored with our usual stuff. Doing these recipes has been a nice way of reminding myself of some old favorites that I haven't made lately, and also of coming up with new things.

Last Friday night was a new thing: I made crepes for dessert. Who knew they were so easy?

Here's the story:

In a blender, put 1 cup flour, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 eggs, 1 cup milk, and tablespoons of melted butter. Blend until you have a thin batter. Now let it sit for twenty minutes while you do something else.

In my case, that was peel and pit three peaches, dip the cut halves in sugar, and place them in a heated non-stick pan over medium heat for about five minutes: sugar-grilled peaches! Yum! I also pitted about a dozen cherries and cooked them along with the peaches, then cut the peaches into bite-sized chunks and put the whole mess in a bowl.

Then: I heated a small non-stick skillet over medium heat (I sprayed it with non-stick spray because I don't really trust the pan). Poured about a ladleful of crepe batter in, swirled it around a bit, and waited for it to look dry on top. Flipped it (this was the only hard part: I loosened the edges with a metal spatula and then carefully lifted and flipped) and cooked the other side until the whole thing was dry and lightly spotted with brown in places. Put it on a plate, spread a little nutella on it, and folded it up. Repeat until the batter's gone (or, in my case, until you have two crepes per person. I had leftover batter which made one nice breakfast the next morning.)

I did these just before we sat down to dinner, and put them in the oven (along with the peach/cherry mixture) with the door closed while we ate. I didn't turn the oven on, though I might have put it on "warm" if I thought we'd take a long time over the meal. We didn't, though, and I served each person two crepes with some fruit on top (or, in case of picky children, on the side). Everyone was delighted, and it was so easy I felt almost guilty. Why haven't I been doing this for years?