When in France…. you eat crepes, right? Well, I’m not usually a big crepe fan, not even really a big pancake fan, I’m more of a pikelet person myself ;) But if you’re going to become a crepe convert surely France is the place to do it? After having the best crepes I’ve ever tasted in Paris, I was on a crepe mission. Not to eat crepes, but to master the crepe. Yep, straight to our Paris Airbnb kitchen, via the local Fran Prix, I started to experiment with crepes. If that wasn’t enough, 5 more weeks in Nice resulted in crepe craziness… and a lemon curd crepe cake?! I don’t even recognise myself.
Lemon curd, or lemon butter as I grew up knowing it, was an obvious cake filling. I first tried and made lemon butter with a family friend who babysat my sister and I. Since then there was no looking back, lemon butter continues to be one of my absolute favourite things to eat (thanks Brenda!).
So this brings us to the day I decided to make a Lemon Curd Crepe Cake. I had so much fun doing this, and it really felt like an accomplishment, even though it’s actually pretty simple. The lemon curd can be made the day before, and then all you need to do is make the crepes and cool them, before assembling. If you want to keep it really simple, you can even buy the lemon curd (but it tastes so good if you make it!).
Lemon Curd Crepe Recipe
Ingredients
For the crepes:
2 Eggs
3/4 cup of milk (180ml)
1/2 cup of water (120ml)
1 cup of flour (240 grams)
2 tablespoons of melted butter (30 grams) + more for pan
Please note: we made 2 batches to get the desired amount of crepes :)
For the lemon curd:
2 Eggs + 2 Egg Yolks
160 grams of Sugar
80 grams of unsalted butter
2 – 3 Lemons (zest + juice) depending on size
Make
Crepes
Combine all ingredients in a blender and then rest the batter in fridge for an hour.
Melt butter in a heated pan.
Pour in the batter into the pan and swirl to thinly coat the pan.
Cook for 30 seconds – a minute and flip, cook other side for less, until pale/light brown.
Continue with rest of mixture, and cool on cooling rack or paper towel.
Lemon Curd
Whisk eggs, yolks and sugar together.
Put in a saucepan over low heat and add butter, lemon juice and zest and continuously whisk until thickened.
You can strain the mixture to remove the zest but sometimes I like keeping the zest in there.
Store in a jar and keep in the fridge. Should keep in fridge for about 1 – 2 weeks but mine only lasted a couple of days due to lack of self-control and a serious love of lemon curd ;)
Assembling The Lemon Curd Crepe Cake
Assembling is as easy as layering each crepe with a thin layer of lemon curd in between, up to about 20 layers of crepes. Top with your choice of toppings, we used strawberries and cream.
As not all crepes are created equal, if your crepes are all completely different sizes or if you want a smaller crepe cake, use a cookie cutter to cut smaller circles out of each crepe and layer these. This is what we did, as there is no way we could have eaten an entire crepe cake with 20 crepes in one day. For me, a crepe cake is best eaten on the day it’s made, although crepes and lemon curd can both be made a day or so before.