Did you know that October 10 is World Egg Day? Well, thank to the folks at the Incredible Edible Egg (the American Egg Board) I do. (Check out their World Egg Day Incredible Egg Designer for some online egg decorating fun.)

So no excuses, let’s indulge in some egg recipes!

Making crepes with the kids

I love typical French egg dishes – quiche, chocolate mousse and crepes. So when I learned to make crepes in home economics class back in seventh grade, my French mother was thrilled to share Julia Child’s Crepe Fines Sucrees recipe from Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Volume One. It’s a bit involved and uses orange liqueur, rum, or brandy. Still, it was the recipe we loved to use.

Since my kids are a bit younger, I wanted something simpler to make, so I picked the crepe recipe from the Disney-Pixar Ratatouille movie cookbook, What’s Cooking?: A Cookbook for Kids. What I like about it is that it’s simple and the cookbook has a pictorial on how to cook and flip a crepe.

Making the batter: We made the batter on Saturday night (you have to refrigerate it overnight) so we’d have crepes for Sunday morning. I pre-measured the ingredients and let the kids pour them into the blender.

Cooking the crepes: Please be forewarned that making crepes is a bit tricky. You have to be generous with the butter, make sure the pan is hot, and throw out the first crepe, which is usually a mess. (Mine magically turned out O.K. But if yours doesn’t, I won’t tell if you decide to scarf it down or feed it to the dog.) This may be something you want to handle instead of the kids.

Also, it takes a lot of time to make 12 crepes. Either start early before everyone’s famished, or get two pans going at once. I kept my kids busy by letting them drink cafe au lait (more lait than cafe), put on music (DEVO, go figure) and having them dance around the house in their underpants. Daddy missed all the fun because he was hunting.

Colette’s Crepes

Makes 12 crepes

Ingredients:

1. 3 eggs
2. 1 1/2 cups milk
3. 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour
4. 1 tablespoon sugar
5. 1/4 teaspoon salt
6. 2 tablespoons melted butter

Directions:

1. Put all the ingredients in a blender in the order listed. (To avoid getting egg shells in the mix, crack the eggs into a bowl, remove any shell bits, and then pour it into the blender.) Blend until smooth.
2. Remove the lid and scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula. Briefly blend the mixture again. Set the covered blender in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or overnight. (Overnight is best.)
3. When it’s time to cook the crepes, heat an 8- or 9-inch shallow nonstick frying pan over medium heat. To tell if the pan is hot enough, wet your fingers and then flick the water on to the pan. If the water sizzles and jumps off the pan, it’s ready.
4. Then melt a very thin pat of butter in the pan and swirl it around to coat it. I used a silicon pastry brush to evenly distribute it.
5. Blend the batter again in the blender to smooth it.
6. For the first crepe, pour 1/4 cup of batter into a measuring cup and pour the batter into your heated pan. Immediately tilt and swirl the pan to evenly coat the bottom until the batter stops running.

7. Cook the crepe on the first side for about 45 seconds, then quickly flip it with a spatula and cook the other side for about half as long.
8. Grasping the pan securely, swiftly invert it so the cooked crepe will fall on to the large plate. Rub a little butter in the pan before cooking the next crepe.
9. Adjust the heat if they brown too quickly or slowly.

• When I was melting the butter for the next crepe, I dipped my silicon pastry brush into it and brushed the previous crepe so it wouldn’t stick to the next one.
• While I was cooking, I had the crepes in a warm oven on a oven-proof plate. I turned the oven to 200 degrees F, then turned it off to keep the crepes warm but not dried out.

Toppings

Now it’s time to get the kids involved! In home ec class, we used powdered sugar and fresh squeezed lemon juice. You cannot believe how good this is. If you only have concentrated lemon juice in house, use a pastry brush to apply the juice then sprinkle the powdered sugar on top.

Other ideas for toppings are jam, melted chocolate, Nutella hazelnut spread, cream cheese, and thin banana slices. We used the delicious raspberry jelly our neighbors made from berries from our bushes and theirs. But the kids’ favorite and mine was Madhava Pure Organic Raw Agave Nectar. Wow.

Get creative and have fun with your crepes!

Topping directions:

1. Apply your favorite topping to the crepe.
2. Fold in half. Then fold in half again.
3. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and garnish with strawberries or raspberries and mint leaves.
4. For dessert crepes, you can drizzle a little melted chocolate on top, too.

Celebrate World Egg Day with more egg recipes

Here are some more recipes from my cooking blogs:

• Julia Child’s chocolate mousse (the best ever!)
• The universal quiche
• Pepper and onion egg-white omelet
• Fat Smash frittata
• Ham palascintas with mustard cream sauce
• French toast casserole
• Chinese hot-and-sour soup
• Strained eyeballs (Halloween hard boiled egg recipe)
• Hard boiled mice (Easter hard boiled egg recipe)
• Sunshine toast

Thanks to the folks at the Incredible Edible Egg (the American Egg Board) and Parent Bloggers Network for sponsoring this post and providing a stipend for the ingredients.

Note: For my regular readers, you may remember that my daughter Lucie has an egg allergy. We think she may be growing out of it, so I’m slowly adding eggs back into her diet. We’re still avoiding nuts and peanuts, though.

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