Crepes Suzette! It's FLAMBE time!
This dessert was popular in the days of white gloved waiters, but no white gloves necessary! First you make crepes which are already delicious, then you make an orange caramel sauce which you FLAMBE! So fun and exciting! Both the crepes and orange caramel sauce are delicious for other uses, like crepes filled with nutella and bananas, or ice cream with orange caramel sauce on top! Yum!
These crepes are saucy!
Crepes Suzette
Yield: 6-8 large crepes (I used a 10” skillet)
Crepes:
1/2 cup Milk
2 Eggs
1 Tablespoon Butter, melted
2 teaspoon Sugar
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1/2 cup Flour
Orange Caramel Sauce:
1/2 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Butter
Juice of 1 Orange (about 1/4-1/2 cup)
2 ounces (1/4 cup) Grand Marnier (optional)
To make crepes, whisk together all the crepe ingredients until smooth and combined. If it is lumpy just pour it through a strainer. Let this sit in the fridge at least 30 minutes or overnight.
To cook the crepes, heat a non-stick skillet to medium high heat (or a crepe pan if you have one of those!). Grease the pan with a little butter or oil then pour a few tablespoons of batter into the pan and swirl the pan around to coat the base. You don’t want your crepes to be thick, so depending on the size of your pan probably 2-4 tablespoons.
Continue heating the crepe until it looks matte on top and not liquidy, then it’s all cooked! Peel it off the pan and place onto a clean baking tray. Then continue until all your batter is used up, placing each crepe onto the baking tray, the crepes can overlap a bit and they shouldn’t stick together.
Now for the sauce! Make sure you have ALL the sauce ingredients ready to go, you can’t walk away from this once you start.
Heat up a large pan over medium-high heat. Place a few teaspoons of sugar onto it and stir until it is melted, then add a few more teaspoons of sugar and continue stirring until it’s melted, then continue until all your sugar is used. This is called a dry caramel. Once all your sugar is melted, continue cooking until it is a nice golden brown colour.
Turn off the heat and carefully add your butter, stirring it gently until it is all melted and combined. Watch out this is going to be super hot and bubbly!
Now slowly pour in your orange juice, and stir to combine. Even though this is off the heat it is still going to bubble up and steam so be careful! If the sugar clumps up don’t worry!
Now put your caramel sauce onto a medium-low heat and cook until all the sugar clumps have melted and the sauce looks nice and smooth.
Now turn off the heat and pour in your grand mariner (if using), DO NOT POUR FROM THE BOTTLE! This can carry a flame back into your bottle and explode which would not be good! Just use a measuring cup or small container. Carefully using a BBQ lighter ignite your sauce, it might take a second and then it will be on fire! Carefully shake your pan until the fire burns itself out. If you get scared or the fire gets out of control, keep a lid nearby to cover the pan, this will put out the fire if you need. IF YOU HAVE A GAS STOVE your burner will ignite the pan, you might have to tilt it towards the flame, but it will catch on fire that way. If you are not comfortable with this, turn off your gas stove, move your sauce off the heat and ignite with the BBQ lighter as I had. Now your delicious sauce is all ready to go!
To serve, fold each crepe in half and then fold that in half, so it looks like a triangle shape. Then you can place the crepes directly into the sauce, or you can place the crepes onto a plate and pour the sauce on top! Yum!