These crêpes are so easy to make at home! This classic French street food is on regular rotation around here because it can be enjoyed with sweet or savory fillings, making it really versatile. They're soft and buttery, but substantial enough to hold up to heartier fillings like ham and Swiss or even sausage-gravy and eggs.
This is the best and only crêpe recipe you'll ever need (even if we have a few other tasty variations we think you'll also enjoy♡).
The Best Ways to Eat Crêpes
The quick answer -- any way you want to. Eat them rolled up all by themselves, sprinkled with a little sugar and butter, or Suzette-style! Go crazy and slather the insides with homemade strawberry sauce, Nutella and bananas, maple syrup, or even PB&J.
These delicious little crêpes can be made ahead of time and stored in the fridge (or frozen), giving you a head start for quick mid-week meals or early morning breakfasts for the kiddos. Plus, you can even use this recipe as the base for making your own Lady M-inspired Mille Crêpe cake!
Classic French Crêpes Ingredients
- All-purpose flour
- Whole Milk (or milk of choice)
- Eggs
- Unsalted butter
- Sugar
- Salt
The Secret to Making Better-Tasting Crêpes
This crêpe recipe uses browned butter as the not-so-secret ingredient, but you can skip this part if you're short on time. Taking the time to brown the butter imparts a nuttier depth of flavor to the finished crêpes.
This extra step only takes a few seconds more for the melted butter to go from golden to perfectly toasted. After this, it's just a matter of whisking everything together. It's that simple. It's even easier to make blender crêpes. Just measure everything straight into your blender or food processor and process.
The longest step in the crêpe-making process is the resting time, which is essential to get soft, tender crêpes. Cooking the crêpes takes about 15-20 minutes total. And you can double the batch and freeze them!
This "cook once, eat twice" method is perfect for busier families 4who still want to eat well throughout the week (or want to be able to sleep in on the weekends and still feed their kiddos something wholesome and delicious).
How to Make Classic French Crêpes Step-by-Step Instructions
Step 1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan and heat until slightly browned and nutty smelling but not burnt.
Step 2. Make the batter by whisking together the flour, sugar, salt, milk, eggs, and browned butter, or use a food processor or blender. Pulse until smooth and bubbles form, about 30 seconds.
Step 3. Rest the batter at room temperature for 15 minutes, or cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to overnight. Whisk before using.
Step 4. Heat a 10 or 12-inch crêpe pan or nonstick skillet over medium. Lightly brush with butter, add ⅓ cup batter, and swirl to coat the bottom. Cook until golden brown and bubbly.
Step 5. Loosen the edge with a spatula, then carefully flip using your fingertips. Cook 30 seconds to one minute more until cooked through. Repeat with remaining batter, brushing with butter as needed.
Step 6. Fill the crêpes with your favorite sweet or savory fillings and enjoy!
What are the Best Dessert Crêpe Fillings?
Traditionally, these are some of our favorite sweet crêpe fillings, but you should definitely experiment with your favorite add-ins.
- butter + sugar (coarse raw cane sugar)
- lemon juice + sugar
- ice cream + toasted nuts
- Nutella + banana
- salted caramel + bananas
- dulce de leche + marshmallow cream
- peaches + cream
- strawberry or cherry jam
- peanut butter + jelly
- strawberries + cream
Our Favorite Savory Crêpe Fillings:
- sausage, eggs, and gravy
- ham + eggs
- ham + asparagus
- chicken Florentine
- smoked salmon, spinach + egg
- swiss cheese + bacon
- prosciutto cotto, Emmental cheese, sun dried tomato + olives
- tuna + sun-dried tomatoes
How to Store Leftover Crêpe Batter
Making crêpe batter in advance or storing leftover crêpe batter require adding the crêpe batter to an air-tight container (I prefer glass canning jars) and refrigerating. Glass jars keep the batter from taking on any odors in your fridge. Just be sure to shake the jar well or whisk the mixture before using.
Classic French Crêpes FAQ
The word "crêpe" is pronounced like "krepp", but if you're from the south like me, you grew up saying it like "craipe".
The French (specifically the people of Brittany) may have invented crêpes around the 13th century. It's been told that the traditional buckwheat crêpe came first and may have happened by an accidental spill of thin buckwheat porridge onto a hot pan. However, some historians say the crêpe comes from Italy and traveled to France by way of Katherine de Medici, who brought her Italian chefs with her. She loved spinach so much that it was served at every meal, and one of her favorite dishes was "Crespelle alla Fiorentina"-an Italian crêpe filled with ricotta and spinach, covered in béchamel sauce, and baked. While we may never know exactly how crêpes came to be, they're celebrated in France every year on "Le Jour des Crêpes" (The Day of the Crêpes) to offer blessings for good luck in the new year. Buckwheat flour is typically used for savory crêpes (galettes or crêpes salées), and regular wheat flour is reserved for sweet crêpes (crêpes sucrées).
No one knows for sure if the crêpe was invented by the French or brought to France by Katherine de Medici and her Florentine chefs who cooked one of her favorite dishes, "Crespelle alla Fiorentina"-an Italian crêpe filled with ricotta and spinach, covered in béchamel sauce and baked. We'll never know for certain, but one thing is for sure: there was a lot of recipe "borrowing" going on back then, much like there is today!
Yes, crêpes are a type of very thin French pancake. There are usually two types: sweet crêpes (crêpes sucrées) and savory galettes (crêpes salées).
The main difference is that pancakes use a leavening agent like baking powder or baking soda to make them taller and fluffier, while crêpes are paper-thin and usually larger in circumference. Pancakes are generally served stacked 2-3 high, while crêpes are typically stuffed with ingredients and rolled or folded. Another difference is that pancake batter is much thicker than crêpe batter, which uses more eggs and less flour per batch.
Let's get started!
Print📖 Recipe
Classic French Crêpes
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 12 crêpes 1x
- Diet: Vegetarian
Description
This crêpe recipe is delicious and easy to make! You can have a quick breakfast, lunch, or dinner, ready to go within minutes. And they make a great snack or lunchbox addition for the kiddos. Stuff them with your favorite sweet or savory fillings and make everyone happy!
Ingredients
- 1 cup all-purpose, spooned and leveled (120g)
- 1 tablespoon sugar (decrease or omit if preferred) (13g)
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt (or ⅛ teaspoon table or sea salt)
- 1 ½ cups whole milk (354g)
- 4 large eggs
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted (43g)
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Instructions
- Melt and brown the butter. Place the butter in a small saucepan and heat until it's slightly browned and it smells "nutty" but isn't burnt.
- Make the batter (food processor method). In the bowl of a food processor or blender combine flour, sugar, salt, milk, eggs, and browned butter, pulse until mixture is smooth and bubbles form on top, about 30 seconds. *see notes for hand-whisking method
- Rest the batter. If you're in a huge hurry, let the batter rest at room temperature for 15 minutes before making the crêpes. Otherwise, cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to overnight and whisk before using.
- Cook the crêpes. Heat a 10 or 12-inch cast-iron crêpe pan, well seasoned cast-iron skillet, or another nonstick skillet over medium. Lightly brush the surface with butter. Add ⅓ cup batter and swirl the pan to completely cover the bottom and sides of the skillet. Cook until the underside of the crepe is golden brown and it starts to bubble.
- Loosen the edge of the crêpe with a spatula, then using your fingertips, carefully and quickly flip the crepe over and continue cooking approximately 30 seconds to one minute more until the crêpe is cooked through. Slide the crêpe out of the skillet and repeat with remaining batter coating the pan with butter as needed.
- Fill the crêpes with anything you want either sweet or savory and Enjoy!
Notes
- If using salted butter instead of unsalted butter, omit the salt called for in the recipe.
- If you want dessert-only crêpes, simply increase the amount of sugar to 3 or 4 tablespoons instead of the 1 tablespoon called for. They can be eaten all by themselves like this without anything else and they taste like an actual dessert.
- If you're short on time, you can skip browning the butter, but we recommend toasting it if you can because it only takes a few seconds more.
- Want to avoid rubbery crêpes? If you want to avoid rubbery crêpes, be sure to follow these easy tips for tender crêpes every time:
- Use regular all-purpose or 00 flour and do not overmix the batter which will further activate the gluten creating a tougher crêpe.
- Rest the batter for at least 15 minutes at room temp or in the fridge, but it's better to allow at least 1 hour covered in the fridge or even better, overnight.
- Make sure your pan is hot (just before it starts smoking) so that the crêpe cooks properly. If your heat is too low, the crêpes can turn out rubbery and if your skillet is too hot, it can become crispy, hard, and overcooked. But don't be intimidated, even if you're new to cooking crépes, it takes just a few practice rounds to get it just right!
- MealPrep for quick breakfast, lunch, dinners, and snacks, by doubling the recipe. If you want to have plenty of crêpe'y goodness ready to go, cook as directed, cool completely, and store crêpes stacked on top of each other in a sealed bag in the fridge. If freezing the crêpes, stack the cooled crêpes in preferred portions, wrap them snuggly in recyclable plastic wrap, and place them in a sealed bag in the freezer. Thaw crêpes overnight in the fridge or on the countertop at room temperature.
- Make the batter (hand-whisking method). In a medium-sized mixing bowl combine flour, sugar, salt, milk, eggs, and browned butter whisk vigorously until mixture is smooth and bubbles form on top, about 30 seconds, and proceed with the recipe.
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Rest Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Category: Breakfast + Brunch
- Method: Skillet
- Cuisine: French
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 2 crêpes
- Calories: 195
- Sugar: 5g
- Sodium: 145mg
- Fat: 10g
- Saturated Fat: 5g
- Unsaturated Fat: 4g
- Trans Fat: 0g
- Carbohydrates: 18g
- Fiber: .5g
- Protein: 8g
- Cholesterol: 145g
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