Crepes Like Me...

So if you're not a Lyle Lovett fan you probably don't get the humor of my title but that's okay. At least I crack myself up... So anyway, when we were on our Mexican vacation, I tried crepes for the first time and they were so good. I watched the guy at the little crepe station very closely and decided it didn't look that hard and bonus Trent liked them. Perfect. So I decided to give it a shot. I found the recipe on foodnetwork.com, it is one of Paula Dean's and I like her plus the one I found on marthastewart.com said I had to let the batter rest for at least two hours, come on Martha I am hungry here! So since Paula only wanted 20 min of batter resting time, I went with hers.
So what do you need? Very simple stuff. I have a friend who always keeps those boxes of Jiffy muffin mix on hand. She calls them her "mother in law" breakfast because it uses stuff you always have on hand and you can whip them up really quick and make your mother in law think that you cook breakfast every morning. Luckily I have a very cool mother in law who probably doesn't care if I make Trent breakfast but the crepes fall into the "mother in law breakfast" category because it is stuff you have in the pantry. Plus a bonus, they seem really fancy so you can impress your family, friends and neighbors but they are really pretty easy, shhhh.
You need:
3 large eggs
1 1/3 C milk
3/4 C flour
6 T melted butter
pinch of salt
(also I added a splash of vanilla)

So whisk the eggs first, then add your wet ingredients followed by the dry. I usually just melt butter in a coffee cup in the microwave. The batter will be a little lumpy but Martha said that was okay. So now that the batter is made, unload the dishwasher or check your email or some such thing for 20 minutes while it rests.

Next put a skillet or griddle on medium heat and let it get hot. Brush it with melted butter and then pour about 1/4 C of the batter on the hot pan. Now quickly lift up the pan and rotate it in a circle spreading out the batter as thinly as you can. Let it cook until the edges start to pull away from the pan and air bubbles start to puff up in the center.

A couple of notes, first I started with a round skillet because that's what Paula and Martha had in their photos but I found I didn't have room to get around the crepe to flip it so I switched to a large griddle pan. Also I think I had the pan too hot because my first crepes were a bit too browned. Also I just melted some more butter in the coffee cup and used one of those little rubber brushes to dab butter on the pan in between crepes.

So once the edges start to pull away, use a rubber spatula and tease the edges away from the pan. Then flip the crepe over. Paula and Martha said to do it in "one fell swoop" which meant nothing to me until I got the hang of it. My first one I tore to bits trying to flip it but basically what worked for me was I used the rubber spatula and and my fingers (Paula said I could use my fingers) and pushed the spatula as far under the crepe as I could then I used my cat like reflexes to flip it over very very fast. Here is one that I flipped. So you can use any fillings you want. If you had a lot of people over it might even be fun to do a crepe buffet. They can be sweet or savory. There are over 150 crepe recipes on foodnetwork.com including one with brie and smoked salmon that sounded wonderful. But you could use cheese and deli meat or vegetables or any kind of fresh fruit, jam, cream cheese, whip cream, peanut butter, chocolate sauce, bananas, etc. In Mexico I had Nutella and strawberries with sweetened condensed milk drizzled over the top. What is Nutella? I am so glad you asked because it is heaven in a jar. It is an Italian chocolate hazelnut spread. It is what little Italian kids eat on their sandwich because they don't have peanut butter in Italy. It is so decadent and wonderful. I eat it on bagels all the time. You can get it at most grocery stores, it is on the peanut butter aisle.

So today I went with Nutella and raspberries. Did you know raspberries had a "p"? I didn't, thank goodness for spell check : )

First I spread the Nutella in the center of the crepe. Then I folded it in half and rolled it up like a burrito.

Then I drizzled a little more Nutella because I am very naughty like that and sprinkled it with raspberries. It was sooo sooo good. Trent didn't like them, he said he could taste egg. Trent doesn't eat eggs. Have I mentioned that his weird food issues really stifle my culinary creativity? So make these for yourself, make them for your mother in law, make them for your friends but don't make them for Trent.

A nice stack of thin, airy, yummy crepes. This recipe made about 18 crepes (including the one I tore up while trying to flip it and then got mad and threw in the sink). So since I now have 15 crepes left and Trent won't eat them, does anyone want to come to College Station for breakfast?

Reeses Peanut Butter Cup-cake

Okay, first of all I think I need to take a course to figure out how to put the pictures on this thing the way I want! But anyway, it occurred to me that I have cupcake in my blog title and have never put a cupcake recipe on here. It also occurred to me that Trent had surgery over two weeks ago and I was only a good nurse/wife/compassionate type person for about one week. Then I got sick of the whole thing and kind of ignored him but I do love the guy and I want him to love me back so I thought I would try to come up with a cupcake that I thought he would love. He has always had a thing for peanut butter and chocolate and I have tried to make peanut butter cupcakes with chocolate frosting before but they turned out kind of dry and not stellar. So this time I decided to reverse the order and see how it turned out. So I made regular chocolate cupcakes and placed a mini Reese's cup in the center of each one. The above photo is the chocolate batter with the cupcake pressed into it. Then I made a frosting of cream cheese and peanut butter and decorated with Reese's Pieces (thank you for the idea Colby!)

These are the cupcakes before I frosted them. Most of them you couldn't even see where the Reese's cup was but in a couple it peeked out the top, so I just buried it in frosting.

Here is the finished cupcake, I thought they turned out really cute and the were really really good. Trent loved them, which is saying a lot because he doesn't hold anything back when he tells me what he thinks about my cooking (or anything else for that matter).

Here is one cut open so you can see the surprise Reese's cup center.

So here is the recipe:

Shalyn's Reese's Peanut Butter Cup-Cakes

Any chocolate cake recipe that you like will do. Here is my standard chocolate cake though:

1 box of chocolate cake mix (18.25 oz)----a box, gasp! I know.

1 box of instant chocolate pudding (3.4 oz)

small carton sour cream (8 oz)

4 eggs

1/2 C vegetable oil

1/2 C warm water

About 24 mini Reese's

combine all ingredients (except Reese's), then mix on high for two minutes. Fill baking tin with paper liners and fill cups about 1/2 full with batter. Place a mini Reese's in the center of each cup and gently press, (unwrap the candy obviously). Bake 350 F for about 20 minutes. Cool completely before frosting.

For the frosting, I kind of made it up as I went but this is the basic idea:

Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

1 brick cream cheese, softened (8 oz)

1 stick butter, softened

1 C creamy peanut butter

splash of milk

2-4 C powdered sugar

splash vanilla

cream together the cream cheese, butter and peanut butter. start adding in a little powdered sugar at a time. Add in the splash of vanilla and milk and keep adding powdered sugar with the mixer going until it gets to a spreadable fluffy consistency. The End.