It took me a while to figure out why I have such a visceral reaction to crepe cafes, why the overstuffed triangles aggressively drizzled with chocolate sauce make me walk by faster so I don’t have to even smell them.
I love crepes, so why not crepe cones filled with ice cream or hot dogs?
Well, that’s the answer. Those cafes don’t accentuate crepes’ best qualities — the delicate taste of eggs, handkerchief-thin lightness. Instead, these spots bury them with assertive toppings.
It’s not that crepes shouldn’t be flavorful or filled: The most well-documented early ones, earthy buckwheat galettes, came from 13th-century Brittany. They’re still prepared with that flour today and often wrapped around ham, Gruyère and eggs. Like all great dishes, crepes evolved. In the 19th century, wheat flour replaced buckwheat throughout much of France and spawned a world of floppy golden disks.
Crepes aren’t meant to be eaten alone, but they also shouldn’t be overpowered by their accouterments. More than cradles for Nutella and banana, they can — should — be delicious in their own right, subtle and tender with just the right chew. The best way to achieve that is by making them at home.
You don’t need a crepe pan and tiny rounded rake to flatten the batter into beauties; you just need a nonstick skillet (or extremely well-seasoned cast-iron or steel pan) and a smart setup. They’re easy enough for breakfast any time but are especially lovely on Mother’s Day, because they don’t need to be served piping hot and look elegant whether they’re stacked, rolled or folded. They can even be scrunched into free-form flowers.
The whipped cream gets its light-green tint from pandan extract.Credit…David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Hadas Smirnoff.
To make the process feel relaxing, set up a little assembly line with the skillet; the batter in a cup with a spout or in a bowl with a ladle, an ice cream scoop or dry measuring cup; a bottle of oil with a pastry brush or paper towel; a silicone spatula; and a plate for finished crepes.
Once the pan is hot, lightly coat it with oil. As soon as you pour in batter, lift the skillet and quickly rotate your wrist in circles, as if stretching, to spread the batter into a thin round. Set the skillet back down and, when the crepe’s edges brown, nudge them away from the pan and slip the spatula under to flip the whole thing. Once you see golden spots on the bottom, you can slide the crepe onto the plate. It takes practice to form a nice circle, but even a slightly thicker Rorschach splotch tastes good.
To make swirling easier, I developed a batter that’s quite thin, with just a little more swish than heavy cream. It follows the basic formula of flour, milk and egg, but instead of using butter or oil as the fat, it includes the solid white cream that rafts above coconut milk in the can. Just a spoonful helps toast the sizzling batter, giving the edges a crackle and the whole thing a nutty note. It also scents the crepes with a tropical aroma that takes you somewhere beautiful.
That fragrance extends to the accompanying whipped cream, which includes the rest of the coconut cream and pandan extract. Glossy pandan leaves, long and tapered like a sword’s spear, combine a floral sweetness with a grassy edge and are used throughout Southeast Asia in sweets, tinting them shades of green.
My inspiration for the topping came from Diane Moua, the chef and owner of Diane’s Place in Minneapolis, who pipes coconut-pandan diplomat cream into croissants for a spectacular pastry.
“Pandan in Asia is basically vanilla,” Ms. Moua said. “In the Hmong community, we use pandan in almost all desserts.”
Even though she starts her pastry cream with fresh leaves, she still adds a few drops of the extract for its color and to meet the expectations of moms and aunties who grew up on extract-flavored desserts. Ms. Moua explained that coconut brings out the subdued bouquet of pandan, and that pair is streamlined into my simply whipped cream.
It’s so airy it seems to hover over the crepes, not smothering them but lifting them to match their true form.
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