Skip to Content

Crêpes and Pancakes

Crêpes and Pancakes

Sharing is caring!

A crêpe is a type of very thin, cooked pancake usually made from wheat flour.  Crepes are supposed to be thin and elastic and pancakes should be thick and fluffy.

Crêpes belong to the general category of ancient Greek Tiganitai, from Greek tiganos (τίγανος), meaning “frying pan”, which in English is literally translated to Pancakes [Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, XIV, 645c; Galen, On the Properties of Foods, I, 3].  The French term, crêpe, derives from the Latin crispa, meaning tiganitai with “creases”.  (Source:  Wikipedia).

Making crepes or pancakes is not hard. If you can make pancakes, you can make crepes.

I don’t use a special crepe pan. I just use an ordinary non-stick frying pan. Actually I use two sizes. The small one is to make crepes which I roll in various ingredients such as ground meat or spinach etc. and have these as a meal.   For supper I usually make the big ones and add fruit, ice cream, chocolate, or savory ones with ham, bacon, mushrooms, etc.

crepes pepared image

Don’t worry if your first one doesn’t come out very thin or if it’s ruined. This can easily be fixed. I can’t give you the exact proportion as I don’t know how big your frying pan is but just add batter to cover the pan. So after the first one you can adjust the quantity of batter you will pour in the pan. Make sure that the pan is hot.

Crepe with strawberries and whipped cream image

Now the problem is that by the time you finish the last one, the first one will be cold, so when serving family, on a busy night, it’s sometimes okay if they eat them as they are served. On the other hand if you are making crepes to serve friends that might be a problem. Place them in an oven proof plate and keep your oven barely warm and they’ll stay warm until you are ready to assemble them, or serve them as you make them.

Making crepes many times now I don’t really need to weigh the ingredients.  I know how much eggs, milk and salt I use as I know that for about 1 cup of milk I need two eggs. Then I add the flour gradually until the batter comes to the right consistency, which should not be too thick.

Leftover cooked Crêpes can be stored in the fridge covered with cling film for a couple of days or in the freezer between cling film.

Crêpes and Pancakes

Preparation time:  10 minutes

Cooking time:  25 minutes

Makes:  10 Crêpes, 30 cm diametre

Ingredients:

  • 450 grams eggs without the shell (about 7 large ones)
  • 450 ml milk
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 300 grams all-purpose flour

Preparing batter:

With an egg beater whisk eggs with milk, add flour, baking powder and salt.  Refridgerate for half an hour.

Making crepes in a Frying pan:

Pour a tablespoon of oil in the pan and wait until it’s hot (this applies only to the first crepe because after that the frying pan is hot and you don’t have to wait).

Add a thin liquid batter with a cup onto the hot frying pan and tilt the pan with a circular motion so that the batter coats the surface evenly.

Once it is no longer in a liquid form but has set, you must invert the crepe at least once, when you see that the bottom is light brown. Loosen with a spatula, turn and cook the other side.

How do you invert the crepe?

First by taking a spatula and turning it on the other side, or letting it slide into another plate and then taking the plate you put the uncooked side in the pan and third (only for experts) toss it in the air once so that it lands in the frying pan on the other side. Don’t try the third way because you must really be an expert to do that. If your frying pan is small, turn it with the spatula. If your pan is big use a plate because however expert you are the Crêpe is bound to break.  Don’t worry if the first Crêpe sticks to the pan or doesn’t come out perfect.  This happens all the time.  You will see that the remaining will turn out perfect.

Serve hot with your favourite ingredients.

Update:  November 2012

We recently bought an electric crêpe maker so after trying it with crêpes we also made some pancakes and omelettes.

The crêpe maker is non stick, so no butter is needed either in the batter or on the crêpe maker but if you are using a frying pan, you should grease it.

 

In the video above, I was making  Canelloni with Ground Meat and Tomato Sauce or Greek style Canellonnia.

 

 

Making Crêpes using a Crêpe-maker

Ingredients as above

Directions:

  1. Whisk the eggs with the milk.  Add salt and gradually add the flour and mix until you have a batter which should not be too thick.
  2. Refridgerate for half an hour.
  3. Heat the Crêpe maker, according to the instructions.
  4. Add a ladleful (about 1/2 cup) of batter in the centre and spread it with the T-shaped crepe spatula.
  5. Cook it for about 3 minutes and using the long turning stick, try lifting and see if it lifts easily.  If it still sticks on the plate of the crepe maker, leave it to cook for a few more seconds.
  6. Put the lifting stick again near the centre, lift it up and turn it over.
  7. This time cook it only for 1 minute.  (It’s okay if the other side is not as brown as the other side).
  8. Serve with your favourite, sweet or savoury filling.

Ingredients you may use for your Crepes:

Savoury crepes:

savoury crepe with ham and cheese image

Ham, bacon, smoked turkey, cheese, mushrooms, peppers, fresh cream or make canelloni with red or white sauce.

canelloni with minced meat image

Sweet crepes:

Ice cream, nutella, chocolate, dulce de leche, whipping cream, biscuits, spoon sweets (fruit preserves), jams,  coconut, peanut butter, cookies, toasted almonds, other nuts, bananas, strawberries, apples,  etc.

Syrups:

Chocolate, strawberry, sour cherry, coulis, caramel, maple syrup, honey etc.

crepe filling image

 

A few days later we decided to see how the pancakes would turn out.

Preparing pancakes image

As you can see, the pancakes are much thicker than crepes and look more like a thin sponge cake.

Pancake cut picture

Cinnamon Pancakes

Makes:  28 small ones (about 10 cm)

Ingredients:

  • 450 grams all purpose flour
  • 100 – 150 grams sugar (depending on how sweet you want them)
  • 3 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • ½ tsp cinnamon
  • 600 ml milk
  • 3 eggs
  • Butter (optional)

Directions:

  1. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and mix in sugar.
  2. Make a well in the center and pour in the milk and eggs and whisk until you have a smooth batter.
  3. Heat the crepe maker (no butter necessary) or grease a griddle or frying pan over medium high heat.
  4. Pour or scoop the batter onto the crepe maker, using approximately 1/8 cup for each pancake.
  5. As soon as bubbles appear on top, turn on the other side and cook until browned.
  6. Serve hot, adding your favourite ingredients on top.

Pancakes with chocolage photograph

 

You can find my Greek recipes in my cookbooks «More Than A Greek Salad», and«Mint, Cinnamon & Blossom Water, Flavours of Cyprus, Kopiaste!» both available on all Amazon stores. Read more here.

 

crepe with sauce and whipped cream picture

Crêpes and Pancakes

Yield: 10
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes

A crêpe is a type of very thin, cooked pancake usually made from wheat flour  Crepes are supposed to be thin and elastic and pancakes should be thick and fluffy.

Ingredients

  • 450 grams eggs without the shell (about 7 large ones)
  • 450 ml milk
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 300 grams all-purpose flour

Instructions

  1. Whisk the eggs with the milk. Add salt and gradually add the flour and mix until you have a batter which should not be too thick.
  2. Refridgerate for half an hour.
  3. Heat the Crêpe maker, according to the instructions.
  4. Add a ladleful (about 1/2 cup) of batter in the centre and spread it with the T-shaped crepe spatula.
  5. Cook it for about 3 minutes and using the long turning stick, try lifting and see if it lifts easily. If it still sticks on the plate of the crepe maker, leave it to cook for a few more seconds.
  6. Put the lifting stick again near the centre, lift it up and turn it over.
  7. This time cook it only for 1 minute. (It's okay if the other side is not as brown as the other side).
  8. Serve with your favourite, sweet or savoury filling.

Did you make this recipe?

Tried this recipe? Tag me @ivyliac and use the hashtag #kopiaste!

 

Other relevant recipes:

Greek flavoured Waffles

Canellonia with crepes

Kopiaste and Kali Orexi,

Sharing is caring!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Peter M

Tuesday 11th of December 2007

I'm pleased that in Greece, creperies are flourishing. I often opt for the savoury crepes like "manouri & jambon".

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Privacy Policy · Copyright
Skip to Recipe