While living in Brest, France as a missionary, I had the wonderful opportunity to learn this recipe for crepes from a great lady, Mrs. Aasbo. She would invite my missionary companion and myself over for dinner and we would sit at her kitchen table with her two sons while she made us crepes. As Mrs. Aasbo would make the crepes, we would tell her what kind we would like. Hawaiian ( ham, pineapple, and cheese) was my favorite. We would eat until we could not eat anymore. Mrs. Aasbo would continue to cook up the crepes and sent us home with a large stack of crepes for the next few days.
Original Recipe from Mrs. Aasbo
1 kg flour
700 g sugar
12 - 14 eggs
8 wooden spoonfuls of oil
2 litres milk
I have done my best to convert the original recipe. Now be aware that this makes a lot of crepes. Even though I have a nice Kitchen Aide mixer, I still prefer to mix these crepes up by hand, the way Mrs. Aasbo taught me.
Ingredients
7 cups flour
3 cups sugar
14 eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil
8 cups milk
Procedure
Dump the flour into the bottom of a large bowl. (This recipe makes approximately 4 quarts of batter) Pour the sugar on top followed by the eggs and oil.
With a wooden spoon, mix the batter until smooth. This is going to take some muscle as the batter will be rather thick. Make sure you scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl really good so that all the flour is mixed. The batter should be really thick and sticky.
Add the first half of the milk a little at a time, mixing in a figure eight pattern. When the milk is mostly incorporated in the batter, add a little more. This will help prevent lumps in your crepe batter. Make sure to only mix in the figure eight pattern. You can throw in a few large circles around the edge of the bowl. Mix in the second half of the milk in a similar fashion.
Let rest in refridgerator for a few hours. This will allow the froth in the batter to come to the top. I usually put the batter into pitchers which makes removing the froth a little easier.
When you are ready to cook the crepes, make sure to remove as much froth from the top of the batter as possible. This will reduce the number of holes in your crepes. Now I use an electric crepe cooker, but you could also use a crepe pan, or a traditional crepe maker. I have tried all three and prefer the electric crepe maker method for it's ease of use.
After your crepes are cooked, you can fill them with almost anything. Here are some of my favorites.
Black Forest Ham with Swiss Cheese
Fresh Strawberries with Cool Whip
2 comments:
i love crepes! you're lucky you got to live in france :)
i just joined the DB this month too, just checking out everyone else's blogs, wanted to say hello :)
I also knew Soeur Aasbo and was looking for her online when I came across your blog. My companion told me to look forward to the crepe party she always had for the missionaries. Did she ever serve you "Le Special"? It was good reading the recipe. She never gave it to me, but I did learn to make crepes from her, and she did give me a few pendants that I still have.
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