Happy Birthday Dorie Greenspan!!! Recently, Dorie has been a jetsetting maven promoting her gorgeous new cookbook, Around My French Table. I hope that she was able to take a breather from the book tour to celebrate her special day at home with her family.
I couldn’t believe that that Dorie’s book tour didn’t include Los Angeles as a stop (hello, a major market —- hint, hint book publisher), as I would have loved to meet my baking idol and wish her a happy birthday in person! You see, my blog and I owe a lot to Dorie. Baking: From My Home To Yours and Tuesdays With Dorie were catalysts to start my blog two and a half years ago. Little did I know that my weekly baking rituals for the blog would ignite my passion for all things pastry.
A few of the dedicated TWD and FFwD bloggers wanted to wish Dorie all the best on her special day. Since we couldn’t physically get together to celebrate, the next best thing was to put together a surprise birthday dinner. This virtual dinner has a French twist, as all of the dishes are from Around My French Table. You can check out the full birthday spread here. A special shout out to Holly at Phemomenon, who was the mastermind behind this fantastic dinner.
I was being a little predictable when I volunteered to make dessert, so I wanted to challenge myself with a recipe that I would have never imagined making at home – crepes!
As an FYI, the recipes will not be published on the blogs, as we’re encouraging all of you to go out and buy the book. This crepe recipe can be found on pages 411-413.
I {heart} crepes! I’m lucky to live a reasonable walking distance from The Original Farmer’s Market (3rd & Fairfax), where they have a delicious assortment of food stalls. On Sunday mornings, armed with our morning reading materials, my hubs and I make a beeline to The French Crepe Company. We love their crepes – a savory egg and cheese crepe for the hubs, a sweet fruit crepe for me. With this yummy food stall so close to home, I never thought about making crepes at home. Besides, I’ll admit that I’ve been intimidated by those impossibly thin pancakes — delicious to eat, but seemingly a royal pain to make.
With the gauntlet thrown for myself, I went out and purchased a crepe pan and set out to make crepes at home. BTW, I purchased my crepe pan at CostPlus World Market for less than 10 bucks - now that’s a deal!
The batter is super easy to make with pantry accessible ingredients, as well as a naughty twist with rum and grand marinier. Once the batter rests in the fridge for at least a couple of hours, we’re ready to make crepes. My first couple of attempts were pretty disasterous (sorry, no photos as they were not appetizing). By crepe #3, I finally got the hang of it, and was able to crank out the crepes in no time.
Now, the fun part — the fillings! I decided to go all out with a generous schmear of nutella,
a few sliced bananas,
a generous amount of sliced strawberries,
and top the whole thing with powdered sugar and whipped cream!
Wait, one more thing….
make a wish Dorie! Happy Birthday!!!!
