Flourless Crepes

The other day I had a day off and managed to sleep in a little bit. By the time I got up and around it was well past breakfast and closer to lunch. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but figured I’d take a look around online and see if I could find something quick to whip up. I came across a recipe for flourless crepes. Now, I have tried a few other recipes for low-carb crepes, and most of them are more eggy than anything. I’m not saying they’re not good, but just not actually the same as a real crepe. I can safely say the newest recipe I found is the closest to a real crepe I’ve had. You can see the original printing of the recipe here.

Flourless Crepes

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup ricotta cheese (I used low-fat ricotta) 
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbs sugar substitute (Splenda)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tbs butter/non-stick spray (for frying)

Directions:

1. Whisk all ingredients in a bowl except the butter.
2. Heat a non-stick pan and brush with butter (or you can also use spray).
3. Drop 2 tbs of batter in the center of the hot pan and immediately tilt back and forth to spread into a thin circle.  (I used a 6-inch pan and made 5-inch crepes. This recipe yielded 8 crepes.)
4. Cook only for a minute or two until set, then flip to cook the other side.  Keep warm in a plate until ready to serve with filling.

The original recipe called for whole milk ricotta. I used my part-skim ricotta. I’m not sure if using the full-fat would have made a difference in texture or taste, but they were fine with the lower fat version. I also didn’t use any butter or spray in my pan when cooking these. I have a pretty good Kitchen-Aid non-stick pan and these did not stick at all. If I were to use something in the pan though, it probably would have been Smart Balance.

I will pre-warn anyone reading this that I have never had a crepe turn out as thin as a professionally cooked crepe, so don’t judge my crepe making skills :-) I’ve often wondered if having an actual crepe pan would make a difference, but haven’t been able to justify the cost to find out.

Anyways, this is what mine looked like while cooking

  I suppose it looks a little more like a pancake that a crepe, but it is actually a lot thinner than a pancake…it’s just hard to tell in this picture.

After cooking all the batter I mixed up some real whipping cream made with Splenda and a touch of vanilla to put on them. It was a little more fattening than I would normally have went with, but it was sooooo delicious! I also had some frozen raspberries so I defrosted them and put some of those with it.

Be warned, the crepes with the cream and berries ended up looking like quite a mess! As soon as the cream touched the warm crepes it started melting. Regardless of how messy it looks, I can assure you, it was so good!

On a side note, I should mention that I had initially mixed up the whipping cream first (one serving size of it) and had it sitting to the side. I moved on to mixing up the crepes but got distracted by my dogs and when putting the eggs in, accidentally put them into the whipped cream instead of the crepe mixture. I was not happy! I was going to throw out the whipped cream with eggs in it, but my husband thought he would mix up the egg with the whipped cream and cook it like you would a pancake. I tried one bite of it after it was cooked and it was actually pretty tasty, lol! The moral, however, is that if I am ever using whipped cream again I will make it up last, not first!