Breakfast is Served

Nothing like springing out of bed at the crack of dawn for an early morning round of crêpe making. Only I forgot how hard these things really are. I also switched recipes, since I only now noticed that the one I linked to last week is for savory crêpes. It has no sugar to speak of and calls for beer instead of milk. Traditional, but not what I call breakfast (anymore).

So I headed over to the Epicurious site to find another. Because I was in a hurry I pretty much just picked one at random. It turned out to be a mistake for a crêpe mangler like me, since the recipe called for a mere 1/4 cup of flour to one cup of milk and about four eggs. That’s one runny batter. The crêpes it makes are elegant, eggy and delicious, but also very difficult to work with. So much so that I only produced a few of good ones. Lucky I was only feeding one grownup and a toddler who’d never even seen a crêpe before.

Having finally gotten around to preparing last week’s recipe, it occurred to me that I didn’t include assembly instructions in the original post (where was my head last week?). A Nutella-banana crêpe is a largely self-explanatory thing of course, save for the fact that most recipes call for sautéed bananas. That’s a pretty straightforward affair. A little butter, a few bananas and a lot of heat for about 3 minutes. Except many folks (and I count myself among them) like to get a little fancy and make a sauce for the bananas after the sauté is done. That’s simply a couple of tablespoons each of brown sugar and orange juice cooked in the pan for about minute. Toss with bananas. Bada-bing, bada-boom.

Of course you can get more exotic. Lots of folks add a liquer of some type and flame the whole thing. That’s too much for me at 7 in the morning. Over at the Food Network site there’s a very intriguing banana filling recipe that calls for bay leaves. It’s by Michael Chiarello, the male Martha Stewart. Don’t know about that one, but I admit I’m intrigued.

Assembly simply entails spreading a tablepoon or so of Nutella over half the crêpe. Spoon a few bananas over, then fold the crêpe into quarters. Sprinkle with a little powdered sugar, garnish, and it’s breakfast. Now if you’ll excuse me I haven’t finished mine.