Baking My Feelings

Or rather, flipping them on a really flat pan

Last night I said goodbye to my siblings before heading “home” to the U.S. This time more than ever, I did not want to leave. Not a second of the evening went by that I wasn’t aware of how lucky I was to be spending my last night in Paris around a dinner table with my younger brother and sister. 

Watching the escalation of violence in the Middle East has been devastating. Like so many others, it is all I can think about and I feel both completely paralyzed and heartbroken. I extend my love to those affected near and far, the millions of people on either side, whose souls and lives are currently broken.

Whenever I’m overwhelmed by the news or my emotions, I turn to the kitchen. Cooking takes my mind to its safest place. For better or worse, whenever I can’t find the words I share food instead, it is my literal language of love. So today’s newsletter, a pivot from what was supposed to be a roundup of French pharmacy haul, is a recipe of my family’s favorite “comfort food”: crepes.  

There are so many pictures of crepes in my phone. Lace-y crepe edges (thank you, butter!). A picture my brother sent me - he's a Ghianduja / whipped cream guy. A crepe cake I made for a friend. It was delicious, but I'm most proud of having kept my favorite Celine dress clean!

As a kid, my parents would go out for the evening, and in exchange for our silence and obedience, they would let my sister, brother and I have an unlimited amount of crepes for dinner. We each learned to make them around the age of 7, and to this day on lazy Sunday or holidays it is the recipe we always come back to. Once the pan is hot, it’s easy to make a ton of extra to have for breakfast the next day. Leftovers I can get behind! 

Here’s a recipe that takes 15-min to make and will bring joy instantly. 

Ingredients: 

• Equipment

  • Crepe pan (a do-it-all skillet is fine! Non-stick is better)

  • Laddle

  • Spatula

• The bare necessities

  • 2 cups of flour

  • 1.5 cups of milk

  • 2 eggs, ideally room temperature

• A little extra

  • A pinch of salt

  • 2 tbsp sugar

  • A dash of vanilla extract

  • 3 tbsp melted butter

• My favorite toppings 

  • Ghianduja and whipped cream

  • “Crepe Suzette”: sugar, butter, and lemon 

  • Jam

  • Chestnut cream - my father’s favorite

Mix the milk and eggs until they are even. Slowly add in the flour and beat until there are no clumps and the batter is light and bubbly. If you want to go the extra mile, you can sift in your flour, add vanilla and a little melted butter and sugar, and let the batter rest for a few hours or overnight. This allows the flour to really hydrate and the vanilla flavor to permeate the batter. The beauty of making crepes is that you can have the idea for crepes at 6pm and a stack of crepes ready at 6:10pm, so I usually skip these bonus steps.

Heat up a nonstick pan and oil very lightly with a neutral vegetable oil. The first crepe is almost always wasted as the pan is not hot enough yet. By the 3rd crepe, they should be perfect. You must oil or butter in between each crepe - oil will create nice and even edges while butter will create the more capricious, oh-so-delicious lace edges. I use oil on my pan and butter in my batter for the best of both worlds. Flip and repeat.

A little trick for oiling your pan in between crepes - I like to use a paper towel folded and clipped with a clothespin dipped in oil which allows you to seamlessly and lightly coat the pan again and again.  

Finally, set the table with a quick whipped cream, heaps of Ghianduja, marmalade or fruit compote, butter, sugar, and lemon to make your favorite combination.

A bientôt!
Melanie

PS: Ghia's Ghianduja was of course inspired by these childhood memories. We wanted to create a holiday indulgence that would take us back to our childhood memories, except our version of the hazelnut spread is made with half the sugar as Nutella, and olive oil instead of palm oil.

Our intern Amineh and I personally made 500 crepes for the campaign photoshoot.