Crème de la Crèpe

Hello! I am back with another baking challenge today and it contains another wonderful invention of the French-the 15-layer strawberry crepe cake! After the disaster with the macarons, I decided to go a bit easy on myself with the challenges and try out the trendy crepe cake! However, I soon realised that although it might be easy, this crepe cake is a labour of delicate love and patience.

Even though the origin of crepes dates back to the 1800s in France, the discovery of the layered crepe cake was actually only in the early 2000s in Japan by Emy Wada. The fancier name for it is Mille Feuille Crepe Cake. Mille Feuille means a 'a thousand layers' which is basically the essence of this no-bake cake made with atleast 20 (or in my case, to make it easier 15) layers of crepes stacked together, each layer filled with French pastry cream.

Despite being a relatively easy recipe to follow, making this cake took up most of my day. Making the crepes one by one was probably the longest part but the end result is so so worth it! So, let's dive into it, shall we?

The ingredients I used to make this cake are listed below:

For the Crepes:

• 5 large eggs

• 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

• 2 tablespoons white sugar

• ½ teaspoon kosher salt

• 2 ½ tablespoons vegetable oil

• 3 ¼ cups whole milk

• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

• 4 tablespoons butter, or as needed

For the Fruit Mixture:

• 1 (10 ounce) jar strawberry jam

• 2 tablespoons water

For the Cream Filling:

• ¾ cup mascarpone cheese

• 1 ½ cups heavy cream

• 3 tablespoons white sugar

• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1.Pour eggs, flour, sugar, salt, oil, milk, and vanilla extract into a blender to make the batter for the crepes. Blend on low at first, finishing on high, until the batter is smoothly combined. Set aside to refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

2. Scoop out strawberry jam into a saucepan. Rinse out jar with 2 tablespoons of water and pour into the saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and stir. Keep simmering for 1-2minutes, remove from the heat and stir. Let it cool down to room temperature.

Note: Instead of strawberry jam, you can also make strawberry coulis from fresh strawberries. It is a pretty similar recipe- add 500g of fresh strawberries, 1/2 cup of white sugar and 1 tablespoon lemon juice to a saucepan and bring to boil on medium heat. Then simmer on low for another 10 minutes and smooth it into a sauce and let cool down.

3. Brush some butter over a nonstick skillet on medium heat. Pour in 1/4 cup of the batter and tilt the pan to cover evenly. Cook until crepes begin to brown and bubble, about 2 minutes per side. Transfer onto a tray and repeat the same process for the remaining batter, buttering the pan between each crepe. Let it cool down to room temperature for at least 15 minutes before stacking.

I decided to take a depression nap and ended up resting it for two hours lol.

4. Whisk mascarpone cheese, heavy cream, sugar and vanilla extract together in a bowl until stiff peaks form.

5. For the assembly, lay a crepe onto a large surface. Spoon 2 tablespoons of the cream mixture onto the crepe and spread evenly almost to the edge. Swirl in some strawberry jam onto it and then top with another crepe. Repeat this process with the remaining crepes.

Note: If you want, you can also mix together the strawberry jam with the cream beforehand instead of swirling in the jam later.

6. Refrigerate until the cake is completely chilled and it is ready to eat! Cut up a slice and dig in!

The final product after refrigerating looked something like this:

When I cut myself a slice to see the inside, the layers were not as noticeable as I would have liked them to be.

However, in the end it tasted pretty damn good, if I may say so myself. I ended up having two slices for dinner and now I am questioning my food choices and why I eat like a 12-year old!

If you are stuck in lockdown just like me, the cake is really fun to make and will keep you occupied for the whole day at home. You can tweak the recipe anyway you want with this cake, for example- you can use other fruits to make the jam instead of strawberries or you can use a buttercream filling instead of the cheese one. I am sure it will taste just as good any way you make it. And if you are somebody who loves crepes as much as I do, I would definitely suggest giving this a try! Thanks so much for reading my post. Till next time!