Recipe: Crepes with Macerated Fresh Fruit & Kefir

Step One: Prepare the Fruit & Macerate

Prepare the fruit by chopping it into a small dice on your chopping board. Ideally, you want these to be very small pieces about the size of a small pea or smaller. See the Notes for the rationale. Use your scraper to collect all your fruit plus the inevitable fruit juice that runs out. Place it in your bowl.

Take your white sugar and sprinkle over the finely chopped fruit. Turn the chopped fruit gently with your spatula so the sugar granules are no longer visible. Cover the mixing bowl and set aside.

Do not slice your mint or basil leaves yet, save this for later.

Step Two: Make Your Crepe Batter

This is super easy. Place the other mixing bowl on your digital scale. Place all your dry ingredients in the mixing bowl and stir so they are incorporated. Crack your eggs into the small bowl or ramekin and transfer to the dry ingredients. Add the rest of your wet ingredients.

Blend or whisk all your ingredients together to a milkshake-like consistency. Leave this aside and keep your ladle handy as you will use it soon.

Step Three: Making the Crepes

Place your frying pan on a medium to high heat. Wait for it to warm, take the pan off the heat and then smear the frying pan with a thin layer of the butter.

Put the frying pan back on the heat then take one ladle of the crepe batter and pour it into the centre of the frying pan. Rotate the frying pan so a thin layer of batter coats the bottom of the pan.

The batter will become paler in colour and bubble as it cooks. Slide the silicone spatula under a corner of the crepe. You want to look for a pale crepe with a toasty colour underneath. This is likely 3-4 minutes



Turn the crepe over and watch it – you only need about 2 minutes on this side. When a toasty brown colour, fold the crepe in half with your spatula and then fold it in half again. It should now be in a quarter with one curved side on the edges. Place this folded crepe on your platter and cover it with your cloth tea towel.

Repeat this process over and over until you run out of crepe batter.

Step Four: Finish the Macerated Fruit

Chiffonade the mint and basil leaves: this means roll and slice the leaves into thin strips. Uncover the fruit and fold the sliced herbs into the macerated fruit until incorporated fully.

Step Five: Assemble the Dish

Take one of your crepes and place it on the serving plate. I like keeping it folded into quarters. Table a tablespoon of the kefir on the crepe (or as much as you like). Add a tablespoon of the macerated fruit on top of the kefir (or as much as you like).

Serve.

Notes and Rationale: Crepes with Macerated Fruit & Kefir

Why finely dice the fruit?

A smaller dice on the fruit will allow the maceration process to happen more quickly. Macerating fruit for breakfast is already a big ask for people so it will make the whole process happen more quickly if you can do it this way. I also like the presentation of a smaller dice of fruit because it highlights the colours in the dish. There is also something a little ‘elegant’ let’s say about a smaller dice than actual playing dice sizes of fruit.

Why use soft fruit instead of harder fruit like apples and pears?

This also relates to the point above. Soft fruit will macerate more quickly than harder fruits like apples and pears. You can absolutely use harder fruit for this recipe. You will need to factor that into your maceration time as they will take longer to soften and release liquid than using softer fruit. Using a mixture of hard and soft fruit could also work as a delicious compromise offering sugary flavour and some firmer texture.

Why macerate fruit anyway?

Good question, glad I asked it. Maceration is a process of breaking something down by applying liquid, salt or sugar to it. The purpose of maceration is then to flavour the fruit (in this case) with sugar. Soft fruits, especially strawberries, are often macerated which nurtures the same wonderful sweetness from the strawberries which made you choose this fruit in the first place. Strawberries and similar soft fruit, in some ways, are perfect for maceration.

Why wait to slice and combine the soft herb leaves?

Soft herbs like mint and basil turn black very quickly. You should avoid slicing through them more than once. This means you should not rock your knife through the same points in the herb more than once. You can do this with harder herbs like thyme and rosemary but not softer herbs like basil or mint. The herbs will also wilt and change colour very quickly once plunged into liquid. This is visually unpleasant as you lose the bright signature green colour. The real issue is once the leaves go black they also become bitter, mushy and just unpleasant. Your effort to bring freshness and brightness to your fruit will just result in dead garden clippings. The point is to slice the herbs at the very last minute and then mix them into the macerated fruit to realize the best in them.

Why use Kefir?

Crepes are largely tasteless discs that demand a play date. You can use other toppings but I wanted to emulate the use of sharp (lemon) with sweet (sugar) that Mrs EatGoSee enjoys in her traditional Shrove Tuesday classic. Kefir is a fermented yoghurt so it is directionally similar to natural yoghurt or natural greek yoghurt. It holds back from straying into sour cream or creme fraiche territory but only just a smidge. The sharpness is soothed by the sweetness of macerated fruit leaving the comparatively blank crepe to bring it all together.

You could absolutely substitute kefir for natural yoghurt, a greek natural yoghurt or creme fraiche if you like it sharper. Avoid thinner child snack-like fruit yoghurt pots, ever.

Why do you recommend the tools you use?

Non-stick frying pan: I would not try to make crepes outside of a non-stick pan for reasons that speak for themselves. You want to find the widest possible non-stick pan in your house. This will help with the thinness of the crepe in some ways but also people just love a wide, thin crepe.

Large ladle: the main benefit here is to ensure that you are decanting the same amount of batter with each crepe you make. It helps with consistency and, if you use this recipe again, you can be assured of the number of portions you will yield time after time. Lastly, this is an easy way to decant the batter mix into a frying pan.

Small bowl or ramekin: it is wise to crack eggs individually into a ramekin or small bowl before adding them to the bigger batter mix. Now and then I added what is visibly a bad egg into a mix and then discarded the entire mix. It is an avoidable waste of food.

Cook’s knife / Global knives: I like the weight of a cook’s knife and it’s versatile enough to do fine dicing.

Hand blender: It is an efficient, effortless way to ensure a homogenous batter. You should invest in a hand blender if you can. You do not need an expensive one. The metal ones are a bit better than the plastic ones due to discolouration over the years. I know, I have a plastic one; I bought it because it was cheap and on sale about 15 years ago and it still works a dream.

Wooden chopping board: wooden chopping boards are durable and they are better on your knife’s longevity. Never buy a glass chopping board. They look nice but they will dull your knife very easily. The alternative would be to buy plastic but there are many articles about wood vs plastic, which is more sanitary etc. Wooden chopping boards require washing by hand and drying thoroughly. Plastic boards can go in the dishwasher on an appropriate setting so there are points for convenience. I personally buy wooden boards. You do not need to go buy expensive boards. I have a GIANT wooden board about 5 feet wide and just under two foot tall and about 3 inches thick. It is made from recycled wood bought in a hardware store. The store’s carpenter made and treated it for me. It is brilliant as you can cook a whole meal on the same board without washing, drying or flipping over between prepping items.

Bench scraper or bread scraper: I first bought this for bread and pasta making but it has quickly become my favourite tool during recipe prep. Bench scrapers are handy ways to pick up a lot of chopped items in one swoop or clean down your chopping board.

Silicone spatula: These are indispensable to ensure that you clean out bowls, blenders, pots and pans completely. It limits food waste and improves yield. Just make sure that you buy one that is actually silicone and not plastic. You ideally want one that is completely silicone or silicone with a wooden handle. This is important because plastic is less heat resistant and it can melt during use.

Digital kitchen scale: People do DM me to ask about my kitchen scale (true story). I use this Joseph Joseph 400054 Digital Scale with a reversible bowl. Digital scales are more accurate. It is also convenient to weight out individual ingredients in the same bowl when making crêpes. You just press the zero button and it resets back to zero even if it is holding a bowl, flour and everything else. A good digital scale is worth investing in.