How to Make Quickie Crepes

Belinda Olins: Crepes are something all kids love and not just once a year on pancake day. So, I am going to show you today how to make them. They are easy. They make a great breakfast alternative and here we go. So, what you want to have is basically flour, eggs and milk; one egg and milk. You want to weigh out about 125 grams of flour, which you actually can weigh straight into the bowl. I tend to sieve my flour just to make sure there are no bits in it. So, you want 125 grams. Then you are going to make a well in the middle for your egg, okay. So, take your flour and you make a well in the middle and crack your egg. I always suggest cracking an egg into a bowl first, because just in case it's off, you have lost your ingredients. So, you just put your egg into the center. You want 300 ml of milk, any milk and you start mixing your egg with your flour and then you gradually just add the milk in about three parts because you just want to make smooth batter, best to use a balloon whisk because a wooden spoon doesn't quite get a smooth texture. We would just add the rest of the milk, so you start just to have a batter, and we just mix that up. Much better than buying it in packets. Actually I have been spending quite a lot of time in France where pancakes are so much a part of the everyday life, you kind of take it for granted. But even there they sell it in the packets. So, that's how easy it is, just to make the batter. So, we are going to fry our pancakes. That makes just probably enough for about four pancakes. You want your pan to be nice and warm. It would take a little bit of butter, you really don't need that very much, just enough to line the base of the pan. Justine Sharpe: We are all eating too much fats. The food that's available to us and the quantity with which we are eating means that we are consuming more than we need. A bit like sugar, fat is a preference. Fat adds texture to food, it has a good mouth-fill; that's why we like it. Things taste better if they are slightly fattier. The downside is that too much fat blocks our arteries and can lead to premature coronary heart disease and obesity with other risks and problems that, that can convey. Belinda Olins: Even if you have ever seen the making of crepes in those pancakes, in the stands in and around London, they never have to much butter. They just have, like, a coat of butter like that. And then when it's nice and hot, you just pour your mixture into the middle and immediately start, just move it around, so you coat the whole sauce pan base and it will start to stick. Okay, you can see the liquid is just starting to dry into a nice pancake batter. And we are nearly there. The great thing about this is that you can make the batter and if you have just got one child, and know they are going to have one or two pancakes in the morning or whenever it is, you are making them for, you just put the batter into an air-tight container or jar or something and you can store in the freeze for a couple of days, and just it will separate, so you just shake it up before you use it again. So, don't worry if you don't use all the mixture in the first batch. So, you can see it's just starting to lift around the edges. So, we might give it a little shake. Now you can see it's starting to move. So, it's nearly ready to be tossed. But these are great in the morning for the breakfast. These are big change to cereals, you can have them with lemon, and sugar, chocolate spread, if you are feeling rather naughty even if it isn't so great with sugar content, it still makes a nice change. Or If you did want a healthy option, you could have it with bananas, okay and say that's nearly done. Yeah, so and then you have a pancake and you'll just leave it for a couple of minutes on the other side, so it gets nice and brown, then it's ready to serve. It will bubble up nicely. You might want to toss it again, just to check it's done on the other side. We will have a little peek. Yeah, so we are going to give that one more toss and there we go, we have a pancake. We will turn off the heat. I am going show you the chocolate spread option because my son loves this version. Justine Sharpe: Breast milk is sweet, soy milk is sweet, ordinary milk is sweet. So the child automatically has a preference for sweet things. Sugar is interesting because back in the sort of 80s, we called it white and deadly. White and deadly because it contains absolutely no nutrients whatsoever. There is no vitamins in it, there is no minerals; all it is, is empty calories. On the other side of the coin, we all love it because it tastes nice and it adds flavor to our food and it adds distinction between different foods. Belinda Olins: Not to much, fold it over, fold it over again and if you are feeling very naughty, you might just want to sprinkle over a little bit of icing sugar to make it look pretty. Justine Sharpe: The danger of having too much sugar in the diet is really dental cavities on teeth. What happens is the sugar just destroys the teeth and not only, I am informed by my dental colleagues, the first teeth that come through, it can also have an impact on the adult and the second teeth. Belinda Olins: There you have a pancake with chocolate sauce for breakfast.