Sweet and Savory Crêpes

a recipe for dinner and dessert

Crêpes have always represented decadent days off to me. When I was a kid, living in Southern Pines, North Carolina, a crêpe shop moved in on main street, and I thought it was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen.

Southern Pines was and is the horse capital of the middling South. Ocala down in Florida holds the title for the winter capital; New York gets the horses in the summer. And right smack in between the two sits charming Southern Pines, a place with dirt racing tracks worn so deep into the dirt over the last hundred years that they’ll undoubtedly be there for a hundred more. Half-a-million-dollar horses get paraded down the sidewalks, and some businesses even have hitching posts next to their parking spaces.

The old hotels sport pictures of the harness races that used to take place on tracks on their grounds. There are still a few barns in the area that raise harness racing horses. The grooms and trainers learned the sport from their grandfathers and talk with accents as deep and old and southern as the Magnolia trees.

The crêpe place became the spot for the Olympic riders in the area. They’d come in wearing their crisply pressed jodhpurs and button-up Polo shirts, their hair immaculately in place and not bearing any of the matted-downness of my own helmet hair. The only trait that indicated that they weren’t phonies was that they invariably smelled like dust and hot horses.

They’d sit like celebrities in the restaurant, sipping their café au lait and daintily picking at their crêpes. My mom and I would stop there for brunch sometimes when we were walking around the town. It was a treat-stop like going into the saddle shop just to smell the leather and feel the seats of the M. Toulouses and the Stübbens (needlessly expensive saddles — the horse girl equivalent of luxury sports cars).

I loved the crêpe shop.

For Valentine’s Day this year, my husband made me crêpes. As I bit into one with a classic mixture of Nutella and banana, I was immediately transported back to the easy decadence of those lazy mornings with my mom.

Since then, we’ve been experimenting with flavors for fillings. That’s part of the beauty of crêpes — make one big batch of batter and mix up any kind of filling you’re in the mood for. The key is just to make sure that you have some sort of spread mixed in with your filling ingredients. Two fillings stuck out as our absolute favorites. For the savory filling, deli turkey mixed with cream cheese, sautéed garlic and tomatoes, Italian seasoning, and fresh basil won the competition. And for dessert, we became obsessed with pumpkin cream cheese.

Now, I’m not claiming that this is a healthy meal. You do use a whole block of cream cheese between the two fillings after all…

But I stand by the fact that these crêpes are good. Enjoy them for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Just make sure that whenever you do, you’re eating them in the right spirit. Breathe in that southern smell of the pine, listen to the horses clop down the street, and sip your coffee slowly.

Crêpe Batter

Preparation time: 30 minutes

Servings: 10-12 crêpes

You will need:

1 cup flour

2 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup water

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons butter, melted

What to do:

Whisk together the flour and the eggs. Gradually add in the milk and the water and stir to combine. Add the salt and the butter and then beat the mixture until smooth. Poor about 1/4 cup of the batter onto a lightly-oiled frying pan over high heat. Tilt the pan in a circular motion. You want the batter to coat as much of the pan as possible so that you get a nice, thin crêpe. Cook them for about two minutes. Flip the crêpe to the other side with a spatula and let it cook for another minute.

Fillings

Once you’ve loaded up a plate with cooked crêpes, it’s time to fill them!

For the savory filling:

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add 4 cloves of crushed garlic to the pan and sauté until it just starts to brown. Add 1 1/2 cups of halved cherry tomatoes to the pan and sauté until they become soft. Season with a bit of Italian seasoning and remove from heat. Mix together 6 slices of chopped deli turkey meat in a bowl with four ounces of cream cheese and the tomatoes and garlic mixture. Stir in 4 sliced leaves of fresh basil. Top the rolled crêpes with grated Parmesan.

For the sweet filling:

Mix together four ounces of cream cheese with about 1/3 cup of pumpkin purée. Stir in 1/4 teaspoon ginger, 1 teaspoon nutmeg, and 1 teaspoon cinnamon.

You’ll only need 1-2 Tablespoons of filling per crêpe. Put the filling on one side of the open crêpe and then roll the crêpe together.

Et voilà!

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this recipe (and trip back to my horse-filled childhood). If you did, feel free to share it with friends using the button below!

See you next time for another story-recipe,

Juliana Nicewarner

P.S. — My first novel has been released through Adelaide Books! If you want to check it out, look for it at Barnes and Noble or on amazon.com. You can also find it on Adelaide’s website here:

adelaidebooks.com/noregrets

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amazon.com/noregrets