Groundhog Day/Chandeleur 2016

February 2nd is a very important day. Not only is it Groundhog Day, but it is also the French holiday of Chandeleur, or Candlemas, the day in which everyone is supposed to eat crêpes.

For the sixth year in a row, I invited friends over to watch one of the greatest movies ever made, Groundhog Day, and to eat, drink, be merry, and to finish the night with homemade crêpes. I made them one of my favorites, the classic Banana-Nutella Crêpe.

But as usual, I made more crêpe batter than I needed and the following days I decided to get creative with filling them. My crowning achievement this year was a Bruléed Banana Sprinkled With Pink Salt and Homemade Lavender Ice Cream Crepe. Here’s the recipe:

Crêpe batter:

300g Flour

3 Eggs

3 Pinches of salt

60g Sugar

1t Vanilla extract

50g Butter, melted

20g Vegetable oil

Milk

Mix everything in a bowl besides the milk. Add the milk in portions, whisking in until you have a homogenous batter that is thinner than a pancake batter, but not watery thin.

Heat a nonstick pan with a little oil and add a small ladle of crêpe batter. Swirl the pan to coat it in batter evenly. Cook each crêpe until lightly browned and then flip. (The first crêpe of a batch never turns out right. That’s for the chef to eat in the kitchen)

Lavender Ice Cream:

250ml Milk 250ml Heavy cream 120g Sugar, divided 1 pinch of Salt

1/2t Vanilla Extract 1T Lavender flowers, dried 6 Egg yolks In a medium size pot, add the milk, cream, half of the sugar, salt, vanilla, and lavender flowers. Heat gently on medium heat, stirring in the sugar to dissolve until the mixture is just scalded. In the meantime, in a medium sized mixing bowl, whisk the yolks with the remaining sugar until well combined and lightened in color. When the milk mixture is scalded, remove it from the heat and ladle a little over the yolks while whisking. Add more liquid in stages until it is all combined. Then, pour the mixture back into the pot and using a rubber spatula, heat the mixture to 85C (185F), at which point the mixture with thicken and become a crème anglaise. Be sure to continuously mix during this time, so nothing burns to the bottom of the pot. Once you have made your lavender crème anglaise, remove the pot from the heat and strain it into a bowl. For a stronger lavender taste, press the flowers into the bottom of the strainer to release more flavor.

Chill over an ice bath to reduce the temperature before putting it into your ice cream maker. Once churned, put your ice cream into a container and place it into the freezer to harden.

Bruléed Bananas:

1 Banana, sliced

Sugar (cassonade, raw, or granulated)

Pink salt (I like Murray River Pink Salt)

Place a small amount of sugar on the top of each banana slice, torch it with a crème brulée torch until caramelized. Sprinkle with pink salt.

Construct your crêpes and enjoy.