Buckwheat Crepes with Caramelized Apple Filling

Its been a few weeks since I made these, but a very annoying rotator cuff sprain has kept me from doing much of anything the past couple of weeks.  I'm just starting to feel a little better now with physical therapy and drugs (yea! for these) and so I wanted to post about these awesome little crepes.

As I was flipping through my spring catalogue from King Arthur Flour, a picture of crepes w/ bananas and fudge sauce drizzled on them, jumped out at me for some reason.  I hadn't made any crepes from quite some time, and I suddenly felt hungry for some. If you've never made crepes before, I encourage you to try them.  They are so simple and make for an elegant, light, after-dinner dessert.

I wanted to try a new crepe recipe and my first thoughts drifted to the buckwheat flour that I now keep in my pantry after trying a recipe for Winter Buckwheat Pancakes by Dorie Greenspan.  I really loved the nutty flavor of the buckwheat in the pancakes and I recalled that I had copied down a recipe some time ago, for Buckwheat Crepes, from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book.  I also did a search on the internet and came across a recipe for Buckwheat Crepes by David Lebovitz.  I combined what I thought would work best from both recipes to come up with my version of buckwheat crepes.  The recipe from KAF Whole Grain Baking also included a suggested variation, which was to fill the crepes with a caramelized apple filling.  Yum!  I was sold on the caramelized apple filling, even with no picture, since I love apples and it gave me an excuse to acquire a teeny little 50ml bottle of brandy.

Buckwheat Crepes
slightly adapted from KAF Whole Grain Baking and a recipe by David Lebovitz


3/8 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup buckwheat flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 tsp fine sea salt
1 cup 2% milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 large eggs
and
1 1/2 tablespoons butter, unsalted, melted


Combine all of the ingredients in a blender and process until smooth.  Pour the batter into a small bowl, cover the bowl, and stick it in the refrigerator.   Usually, I just refrigerate my batter an hour or two, but David suggests an overnight chill so that's what I did.

The next day, remove the batter from the refrigerator about an hour before you plan on making the crepes.  I use a small non-stick skillet to do my crepes in, but I can perhaps see a crepe pan in my future, since my non-stick skillet is only ~ 7 inches in diameter and I'd really like my crepes to be a little bigger.  An 8 or 9-inch skillet is the best size to make crepes in.  Heat your pan over medium low heat and also give the batter a quick stir with a whisk.  The batter should be the consistency of heavy cream.

Once it is good and hot, drop a small piece of butter into the pan and wipe it around with a paper towel to coat the surface of the pan.  Next, lift the pan off of the heat and pour in ~ 1/4 cup of the batter.  (Since my skillet is a little on the small side I usually use slightly less than 1/4 cup.)  Once the batter is poured into the skillet, immediately swirl the pan up and down to distribute the batter quickly and evenly over the bottom of the pan.

Once you set the pan back on the heat, the crepe will start to quickly cook and set up.  After about a minute, run a small non-stick spatula around the underside edge of the rim of the crepe, then flip the crepe over to cook the other side.  I always gently grab the crepe with the fingertips of both my hands to flip.  Let the crepe cook on the other side for ~ 30 seconds then slide it out onto a plate.  I separate each of my crepes w/ a small piece of parchment or wax paper so they won't stick to each other.  Repeat, cooking the crepes until the batter is gone, or until you get tired of making them, like I did.  I made about 7 or 8 crepes I think, before I stopped.

Don't be too upset if your first crepe doesn't turn out so well.  It takes a little practice to flip them without them getting folded and you'll probably have to adjust the heat on the burner if your crepes are cooking too quickly  The crepes are done when they are starting to brown and look dry on top. Your crepes should be fairly thin and flimsy.

I just let my crepes sit at room temperature until after dinner when I made this wonderful filling to fill my crepes, (but you can warm the crepes in the oven in a baking dish covered w/ foil if you want to before filling)

Caramelized Apple Filling
from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking

1 tablespoon butter
1 apple, peeled and thinly sliced (I used a Fuji apple)
1 tablespoon packed light or dark brown sugar (I used light)
1 1/2 teaspoons brandy

Heat the butter in a small saucepan.  Once melted, saute the apples until just starting to get tender.  Stir in the brown sugar and brandy, and continue to cook until the apples are tender and the sauce has thickened slightly, 5 to 7 minutes.  Serve filling inside buckwheat crepes, topped with whipped cream and a little sprinkle of cinnamon.  Serve warm and enjoy!!

Rugelach: Baking With Julia

The first pick of March for the Baking with Julia group turned out to be Rugelach.  I had made Rugelach before, just once, and loved them, so I was excited to try this recipe.  Traditional rugelach are made in the shape of a crescent with the filling being rolled up in little triangles of dough.  This is how I made them before, and it would've been easier to just deviate from the recipe and form the rugelach the traditional way, but then I wouldn't be trying something new, so my husband and I rolled our Rugelach jelly roll fashion as the recipe instructed.

Our hosts for this recipe are Margaret of The Urban Hiker and Jessica of My Baking Heart.  If you'd like to try making these Rugelach yourself, you can find the recipe on their blog post today, and you can also see how their Rugelach turned out as well!

The first component of the filling for these Rugelach was Lekvar.  I know, what a strange, kind of gross sounding word for something that supposedly tastes good.  An easier short-cut would've been to just use jam or something in the recipe, but I wanted to know what lekvar tasted like.  My husband and I chose to make the prune lekvar, since he is not too fond of apricots.  I made our lekvar up several days ahead of when we made the cookies.

It doesn't look appetizing, but it didn't taste bad.  The dried plums by themselves are rather bland and of course very chewy, but the lekvar was pleasantly sweet from the sugar that was added in making it.  The lekvar is just prunes, a smidgen of lemon juice, sugar and some finely chopped walnuts.

The actual rugelach cookies were a joint project that both hubby and I participated in.  I thought it was so sweet of him to offer to help me.  He is the best hubby in the whole wide world in my opinion!

First off we had to make our cream cheese pastry for the rugelach.  This was just cream cheese, butter, salt, sugar and flour mixed together in our stand mixer.  This finished, the dough went into the refridgerator for several hours.  While the dough was chilling we got together the rest of our filling 'stuff'.
For the nuts, I let him choose, and he wanted just hazelnuts and almonds.  Here's my trusty partner peeling the skins off the toasted hazelnuts:

Now we were ready for assembly.  The dried fruit we chose to use was blueberries, cranberries and a few currants.  The bowl in the far right corner is our cinnamon/brown sugar/sugar mixture.

First layer going onto our pastry dough is the prune lekvar,

then the cinnamon/sugar mix, next the dried fruit and lastly the chopped toasted nuts.

Now comes the tricky part,

...rolling the whole thing up jelly-roll fashion starting with the long side.  Did we do this right?  It seemed that a five inch width did not provide enough dough to roll up into a log and we had terrible trouble pinching the whole thing shut.  We didn't put on all the nuts and fruit called for, because we could see it was going to be difficult to roll.  All the topping tends to dam up at the end where you're trying to roll to.  I think next time we agreed that we would probably make a much wider and shorter rectangular piece of dough to spread our filing out on so that we'd get more 'spiral' effect to our cookies:)

After spending the evening in the refrigerator our log was nice and firm and we were able to egg wash it, slice it, and roll it around in our cinnamon/sugar/chopped nuts mixture.  Hubby did a thorough job of covering ours in the sugar mixture so that we'd have nice caramelization.

Oh, they smelled so good while they baked.  We made them first thing in the morning, so they were reminescent of cinnamon rolls in the oven.  The sugar made a beautiful little pool of golden goodness under each of the rugelach.  Normally I would break off crusty appendages like this, thinking they were unsightly, but not this time.  These were awesome little cookies.  We sampled them while still warm and gooey inside.  

The pastry part was light with a slight crunch and the whole thing did kind of resemble the flavors of a cinnamon bun, especially when eaten warm.  The filling was full of nice contrast, with the creamy lekvar, the crunchy nuts, chewy fruit all surrounded by a cinnamon-ey sweetness.  Very satisfying!

We still have more dough in the freezer so we'll be experimenting next weekend with modifying our rectangular shape for easier rolling, but other than that issue, we thought these were easy to make and a delight to eat as a husband and wife team.

Do check out how the Rugelach turned out for others in the group by going here.