How to Make Crepes With Ingredients You've Already Got

You don't have to master the art of French cooking in order to make crepes. For all the glitter and glam that's usually added to the dish, crepes are essentially made with four ingredients: flour, egg, milk and butter. If you've got that stuff on hand, you've got what you need to make amazing crepes.

Mixing the Batter

It's easy to find simple crepe batter recipes online, and you should play around with your batter until you find one that has the right taste and consistency for you. But you need roughly 2 cups of liquid to 1 cup of dry ingredient (flour). Add enough egg and milk to get a runny batter with the consistency of heavy cream or whole milk. You can add a little water to the batter if it's too thick. Stir the batter thoroughly with a fork for at least 2 minutes. This will remove clumps and help to aerate the batter, which keeps crepes from tasting dense.

Cooking the Crepes

Melt butter in a pan over a low heat just before you want to cook your crepes. Once the pan is hot enough to melt the butter, it's hot enough to cook the crepes. If the butter begins to scorch and stick to the pan, turn down the heat.

Slowly pour crepe batter directly into the hot pan, just enough to barely cover the bottom of the pan. Crepes are meant to be thin. Once the batter is poured, wait about 1 minute and the crepe should be ready to flip. Starting at the edge, gently lift the crepe with a spatula. Moving in a circle, work around the perimeter of the crepe. Once the edges are loosened, gently work the spatula toward the center of the crepe so it can be flipped over. Allow it to cook for another minute on the flip side, and remove it from heat.

Make them Fancy

You can't have good crepes without a filling, but you may not have the time or will to stand in the kitchen slicing fruit. Crepes are just as delicious when filled with ordinary jelly, whatever you have in the fridge. Place a teaspoon of jelly in the center of the crepe. Either fold it in half or roll it up to serve.

To put your crepes over the top, drizzle a little syrup or powdered sugar (or both) right on the top. The beauty of crepes is their versatility. Sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar, cover them in whipped cream, serve them hot or cold. Once you know how to make the batter and you use the technique, you can experiment with your crepes all you want.