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Actually, my planned Valentine’s Day recipe that I wanted to share with you were these vegan crêpes. But then I felt the vegan aquafaba macarons a little bit more, so this vegan crepes recipe comes a week later.
In fact, I was shocked to discover that there is neither a vegan crêpes recipe nor one with blood oranges here on the blog. And on top of that the blood orange season is in full swing. Shame on me!
So today we’re killing two birds with one stone – fictitiously, of course – and sharing the ultimate combination of thin fluffy crêpes and wonderfully sour-sweet blood oranges, so to speak. And can we please admire the spectacular color for a moment?
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Crêpes are the ultimate French classic. Here you can also buy them at every street food festival, fair and other city festivals. Mainly with Nutella filling or thickly sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Unfortunately, they are never vegan. I vote this should be changed immediately in my opinion!
Vegan crêpes dough is not difficult at all. However, I am ashamed to admit that still I have not shared such a recipe with you until now. A bigger no go! Well that is will be changed right now with today’s recipe!
Some of you may have wished for a more classic crêpes version…. A basic dough that can be prepared both salty and sweet. Sorry! But actually not so sorry 🤣 Just give these vegan crêpes with blood orange juice a chance. Alternatively, the crêpes can of course be prepared with regular orange juice, apple juice or any other fruit juice.
And I promise you that I will create a basic crêpes recipe for you that can be prepared both sweet and salty. Deal.
Anyway, I still want to test a version with tapioca starch, which is supposed to make vegan crêpes more elastic. I found the tip at Eat this. This also makes them easier to fold. For this vegan crêpes, my focus was on the fluffiness of the otherwise egg-based version. The secret ingredient for this is: AQUAFABA!
If you don’t know aquafaba yet, here in this blog post I explain it in detail. Aquafaba is the perfect egg white substitute in the vegan diet. It can be whipped up fluffy and airy. Which is why I chose it as an egg substitute for this vegan crêpe recipe.
If you’re like probably all of us, you’ve already used the search engine with the big G to come across other recipes that use baking powder to make vegan crêpes fluffy. Please do NOT use Baking Powder instead of Aquafaba for this recipe.
I have already carried out that experiment for you. And if you – instead of nice pink crêpes – are in the mood for hulk green crêpes, then go ahead! The alkaline baking powder reacts with the acid in the blood orange juice. The result: the crêpes turn green. Therefore, do not use baking powder under any circumstances!
We serve the finished blood orange crêpes very simply with blood orange fillets and an orange butter.
The inspiration for these toppings came to me from a recipe in one of my non-vegan cookbooks. I really wanted to test this recipe and had to veganize it with that in mind.
Of course, you can also use any other filling you like. Melted chocolate, Nutella, etc. anything goes, depending on personal preference.
Vegan crêpes – what to consider when preparing them?
Not much, because the preparation of crêpes is not difficult per se. The overriding credo, however, is patience. A virtue that was unfortunately not given to me 😃. But first, let’s start from the beginning.
It is important that the aquafaba is properly whipped super airy. It should no longer flow out of the container or only very slowly. When mixing the dough, proceed briskly. And stir only as long as necessary. All ingredients should be well mixed. However, if stirred too long, the vegan crêpes batter will lose airiness.
Patience is required when baking the crêpes. I used a cast iron skillet for this, as I personally prefer to work with this material. You can also use a coated pan. The important thing is that you use a pan where nothing sticks. After that, you really don’t add more than 1 or 2 ladles of batter to the pan and swirl the pan briskly. This way, the batter can spread everywhere and the crêpes will be nice and thin. This takes some practice and may not succeed on the first go. As you can see from my crepes, they are not visually perfect either.
The baking out is now the test of patience…. Bake the dough really long enough. Small holes should form on the surface from the air bubbles. Turn the crêpe only when you can easily slide a ladle under it. Then quickly flip and bake on the other side until the crêpe can be moved back and forth in the pan.
You can keep ready-made vegan crêpes warm in the oven at 50° Celsius.
Bon appétit!
Vegan Crêpes with Blood Orange and Orange butter
Equipment
- 1 juicer
- 1 bowl
- 1 food processor with whisk or hand mixer
- 1 cast iron pan approx. 28cm diameter
- 1 ladle
- 1 spatula
- 1 sauce pan
Ingredients
Blood Orange Crêpes*
- 2 blood oranges* approx. 130ml juice
- 4 tbsp aquafaba
- 150 g white flour
- 8 g vanilla sugar* approx. 1 packet
- 50 g sugar
- 150 ml plant based milk
- 1 pinch of salt
- margarine or butter vegan, for greasing
- 2 blood oranges as topping
Orange Butter
- 1 orange juice & grated peel
- 50 g butter or margarine vegan
- 1-2 tbsp sugar
Instructions
Blood Orange Crêpes
- Juice blood oranges and set juice aside for crêpe batter.
- Using a food processor or hand mixer, beat aquafaba until fluffy and stiff. The aquafaba will turn white in color and should stop flowing at all or flow very slowly out of the bowl. Set aside for the batter.
- Combine all ingredients for the crêpe batter, including blood orange juice and whipped aquafaba in a bowl. Stir just until the batter is well blended. Do not stir too long or the batter will lose its airiness. The batter is relatively runny, but that is ok.
- Heat cast iron skillet to medium heat and grease well with butter/margarine.
- Pour 1 to 2 ladles maximum – depends on the size of the ladle, mine is rather small – of batter into the pan. Immediately pick up the pan and swirl it so that the batter is spread thinly in the pan. You really need to work quickly here, as the batter thickens fairly quickly in the pan. Once you have the batter spread all over and a nice round crêpe, return pan to the heat.
- Bake crêpes over medium heat until done. Wait to flip until crêpe bubbles appear on surface and pop into holes. Once you can run a spatula under the crêpe well without breaking the batter, you can turn the crêpe. This will take a good 2-4 minutes, depending on your stove. For the first crêpe, possibly even a little longer. On the side that is already fried, the crêpe should be golden brown. If it gets too dark, reduce stove temperature slightly.
- Bake crêpe on the other side for another 2-3 minutes. Crêpe is done when it can be flipped back and forth in the pan.
- Fold finished crêpe into a half-moon directly in the pan, then form the half-moon into a quarter again.
- Transfer crêpe to a plate and keep warm in the oven at 50° Celsius.
- Grease the pan again with butter/margarine and do exactly the same with the remaining crêpe batter until all the batter is used up. Enough for about 4 crêpes. If you have a smaller pan, maybe even for 6-8 crêpes.
- Fillet the remaining two blood oranges. To do this, remove peel generously so that there is no white skin left. Cut the blood oranges along the seams/scars with a knife and then carefully remove the individual blood orange fillets.
- Arrange the crêpes on plates, drape the blood orange fillets nicely on top and drizzle the orange butter over them with a teaspoon. Serve immediately.
Orange Butter*
- Grate the zest of one orange and juice the same orange. Set both aside.
- Melt butter/margarine in a sauce pan.
- Add the remaining ingredients – sugar, orange juice and grated orange peel. Bring to a boil briefly until the liquid boils and the sugar has melted. Then simmer over low heat for about 5-7 minutes.
Notes
Nutrition
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