Chocolate crêpe cake

Believe it or not, I had never made a crêpe until this past week. And, since I was experimenting, I thought I'd take it a step further than just the simple crêpe- why not make a crêpe cake!

I must say I've contemplated this for awhile, after one of my former customers, Ting-Ting, asked me about making a matcha (green tea) version for her. Needless to say, it never happened, but I was nonetheless intrigued. She had such a focused interest on pastries and would often come into the shop with loads of questions about what I was offering that day, as well as reporting on various pastries she had discovered in Manhattan. The crêpe cake was one of them.

I began my research and opted for a chocolate version. I found a number of recipes on line and soon realized how easy the batter is for this classic treat - milk, melted butter, flour, vanilla, egg, a little sugar, chocolate - ingredients that most of us have in our pantries and fridges on any given day.

You can see my scribbles comparing recipes below. I ultimately went with the one on the upper right - a Martha Stewart recipe. Here’s the PDF for the crêpes only - you can easily halve the recipe for a smaller batch - that’s what I did for my test here.

I did make the batter and cook a few crêpes from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s recipe which uses Dutch process cocoa powder, but the Martha Stewart with the melted chocolate won out in the end both for flavor and texture.

Below are the ingredients for a half batch of M.S.’s crêpe batter. Here’s the full recipe.

Water, butter and chocolate are heated and slowly blended - I used a stainless bowl over a hot water bath for that.

Flour, sugar and salt mixed in a separate bowl - my 4 cup Pyrex was just the thing. Milk, egg, vanilla blended in a separate bowl.

Slowly whisk egg/milk mixture into flour mixture until smooth then blend in the melted butter/chocolate. My immersion blender worked great for that.

The batter requires at least two hours or overnight in the fridge to chill before proceeding.

When it came time to make the crêpes, I chose to make a 4-5" size, thinking I wanted a petite cake for my first attempt. Steve and I have a small sauté pan (I think it's Calphalon) that we've had for years and rarely use. It seemed just the thing for what I was about to do.

I heated the pan and started the process. I soon understood what to watch for as the crépes began to set. It didn't take long before I was into the rhythm of crêpe making. Give the first side about 30 seconds to start setting.

Flip over and cook another 30 seconds until set and dry.

One after another I piled them onto a plate with parchment or deli paper tucked in between. Once all of my crêpes were finished they went into the fridge for my planned assembly the following day.

Especially when making small crêpes, I realized the seemingly inordinate amount of time it took to finish off all the batter (and I had made only half a recipe!). At this point I could imagine having 3 or 4 pans going at once, flipping crêpes one after another in assembly line fashion.

For the filling I decided to make a simple whipped chocolate ganache filling, using 3 parts cream (340 ml/12 ounces) to 1 part chocolate (113 g/4 ounces) by weight. It has to chill a bit so plan ahead.

Boil the cream, pour it over the chocolate, whisk gently, cover (plastic wrap directly on the surface to eliminate air) and refrigerate until nicely chilled. It couldn't be easier!

When ready to assemble, I pulled my plate of crêpes and my ganache from the fridge.

I whipped the ganache to medium firm peaks so it would be nicely spreadable . . .

and began the process.

Getting higher . . . .

and stacking until I had 21 (or was it 24?) layers (OK just try to count them!)

Into the fridge it went to set up before glazing. My chocolate glaze is 113 gm of chocolate and 42 gm of butter melted over a bain marie. Trés simple! Let cool a bit before spreading.

I held the finished cake, covered, in the fridge overnight. When it was time to serve, I sliced it and garnished with caramel spiked chantilly and chopped toasted hazelnuts.

If I haven't mentioned this before, I toast nuts before using, no matter what I'm doing with them. It brings out the flavor and adds so much to the final experience!

A note about chocolate: for this project I used Valrhona's 64% Manjari, the chocolate I used regularly when working at Gracie's. Since then I've come to really enjoy the flavor (and the price!) of Trader Joe's Belgian chocolate, typically mixing half-and-half of their "dark chocolate" and "72% dark chocolate".

I had made a mini-cake with leftover crêpe pieces and ganache for Steve and I to sample. We both felt that the chocolate was too acidic and not necessarily an agreeable taste, so I was anticipating how we and our Saturday evening dinner guests, Magali and Guy, might react to the piéce de resistance.

We all enjoyed the texture and flavor, particularly with the chantilly and hazelnuts mellowing out the acid of the chocolate. But, it was Magali who suggested a bit of orange, which reminded me that I had some candied orange peel in my fridge from an earlier project. I put a couple of pieces of the peel on our desserts et voila! It made ALL the difference. What a delicious combination!

Thanks Miss Mag!