Make this: vegan crepes

Mother’s Day is special. If we’re lucky, we celebrate in the loving embrace of our family. If we’re really lucky, we binge-watch “Law & Order” while George Clooney scrubs the tub and runs a load of whites.

My kids get a kick out of serving me breakfast in bed. I would hate for George to notice toast crumbs on the comforter, so this Mother’s Day, I’m asking for vegan crepes. Traditional crepes are made with tons of dairy and eggs. Delicious, but not so great if you’re watching your cholesterol. Or if you’re out of milk because you were taking selfies with George and forgot to go to the store.

Sweet, plant-based vanilla soy milk is an easy, yummy substitute for the whole milk in traditional crepes. But what could I use instead of eggs? Research recipes suggested vegan margarine. I like the taste of Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks, and even non-vegans will appreciate that Earth Balance has roughly half the saturated fat of butter. Unfortunately, the crepes I made with melted Earth Balance were so oily as to be slimy. Other recipes suggested vegetable oil, but that – no surprise – didn’t improve the texture. Some low-cholesterol dessert recipes substituted applesauce for oil. It worked like a dream here, resulting in crepes that were fluffy and fruity.
They were also really, really burnt. My beloved cast-iron skillets are naturally nonstick and conduct heat like George himself. But the paper-thin crepes singed as soon as the batter hit the pan.

Luckily, a few years ago, I bought an extravagant, pseudo-professional range, the kind with Louboutin-red knobs and a shiny, industrial-sized griddle with precision heat control. It’s overkill for my usual mac-n-cheese dinners, but it earned its keep by saving these crepes. I set the griddle to 350 degrees and cooked the crepes to golden-brown perfection. If you don’t have a griddle with a temperature setting, use a crepe pan or nonstick frying pan over medium heat and adjust the temperature until it’s just right. You’ll probably burn a few crepes at first, but don’t feel bad. They’re not mistakes … they’re research.

Crepes are essentially thin pancakes. You can fill and roll them, a la breakfast cannoli, or fold them into a pocket and garnish with a topping. Fresh fruit and a sprinkle of powdered sugar will finish your crepes deliciously. But if you’re able to do a teensy bit more work, a sweet cherry sauce transforms those crepes into the best dessert breakfast ever. If you have the time and patience to pit fresh cherries, do it. I vastly prefer to rip open a bag of frozen cherries and call it a day, especially on Mother’s Day. To transform the cherry juices into a sauce, you need a thickener. Cornstarch works just fine, but tapioca (It’s vegan!) makes the cooked cherries pretty and glossy.

The problem with tapioca is that sometimes those little white rocks don’t dissolve completely. To avoid chipping a tooth on your big day, use this trick: Muddle your tapioca granules and sugar first, then add them to the cherries. Muddling is a fancy verb for mashing ingredients together, as in, “George, be a dear and muddle the mint and sugar for my julep.” Muddling the tapioca breaks it into even smaller pieces, which helps it dissolve. If you don’t have a muddler, pounding the tapioca and sugar with a mortar and pestle works just fine, too. In a pinch, throw the tapioca and sugar into a zip-close bag and beat it with a meat tenderizer or wine bottle.

This recipe works best if you assemble the ingredients the day before. Refrigerating the batter overnight gives it time to thicken. And long fridge stay for the cherries gives them time to defrost. Plus, doing most of the work the day before means you can sleep in – at least until your fan club climbs into your bed.