Happy New Year! Goodbye 2014 and H-E-L-L-O 2015! Breakfast today is champagne pear crepes - a celebration for a wonderful 2014. It was delicious, it was tasty, and Jonathan even agreed that it actually may have been one of the best breakfasts I've made this entire year (so much for starting off with a bang, but I guess ending with one is good too)!
But the day didn't start out with champagne pear crepes. I started this morning as usual: laying in bed, thinking what I could make for breakfast. What would really capture New Year's Eve? And how could I say farewell to 2014? Finally, I had it. An idea so good that it convinced me to finally leave my warm blanket cocoon...FIRECRACKER eggs!
"What is that?" you might ask (Jonathan phrased it as "What the f*** is that??" when I told him that's what I was making us for breakfast). Firecracker eggs are when you make just-shy-of-soft-boiled eggs, carefully peel them, then throw those suckers as hard as you can against the tabletop to make some fireworks-looking splats!
Well, it didn't work (and it was a mess!). None of the splatted eggs looked like fireworks. So do NOT try that at home. Firecracker eggs do NOT exist, and is only a figment of my half-asleep imagination.
The only other things that I normally relate to New Year's Eve are little black dresses and champagne. I knew I definitely wouldn't be able to do anything with the LBDs for a breakfast blog, which just left me with champagne.
Pears are always an easy choice when it comes to working with champagne because the colors are similar and the full-flavored sweetness of pears pairs (no pun intended!) well with the light crisp taste of champagne.
So when put together, champagne-poached pears are delicious, delicious, and delicious. And when you fold a crepe blanket around them and add on ice cream, it is nom nom nom (I have literally no words to describe it, and have to resort to noises).
Ingredients
Blender Crepes
- 1 ⅓ cups milk
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter - melted
- 3 large eggs
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- pinch of salt
Champagne Poached Pears
- 750 milliliters champagne (standard bottle size, approximately 3.2 cups)
- 2 cups water
- 1 cup sugar
- ½ bourbon vanilla bean - sliced in half lengthwise
- 5 medium pears - peeled
To serve
- vanilla ice cream
Instructions
To make the champagne poached pears
- In a medium sized pot, add in the champagne, water, sugar and vanilla bean and heat on medium-high heat until almost boiling, stirring occasionally.
- Turn the heat down to low, and add in the pears. Simmer for 30 minutes. Remove the pears using a slotted spoon and set aside.
- Continue to simmer the champagne syrup for another hour, until it reduces to about 2 cups. Make the crepes as the champagne syrup is simmering.
To make the crepes
- Mix everything together in a blender, or add all the ingredients into a medium bowl and blend with a stick blender. Allow to rest 15 minutes.
- Heat a cast-iron crepe pan on medium to medium-high heat (I switched between setting 5/10 and 6/10 on my stove). Make sure you give enough time for the pan to evenly heat through (about 5-7 minutes). If the pan is not hot enough, the crepes may start to stick to it.
- Add about ½ tablespoon of oil to the crepe pan and give it a quick wipe using a paper towel. Repeat this process to add on more oil as needed while you are cooking the crepes.
- Once the oil is hot, add ⅓ cup of crepe batter, and quickly spread it around the pan evenly using a crepe rake. You can also try to quickly tilt the pan to swirl it, but I find it easier to use the crepe rake to make even sized crepes. The crepes should be very thin.
- Let each crepe cook for about 1 minute, then flip over and cook for an additional 30 seconds.
- Remove the crepe and place on a cooling rack. The crepe will cool quickly, so if you are short on space, you can begin to stack them up after a few minutes of cooling.
- Repeat with remaining batter.
To assemble the crepes
- Slice the pears into ½ inch (1cm) thick slices and remove the core.
- Place several slices of pears on the middle of a crepe. Slowly fold the two sides of the crepe over the pears, creating a triangle. Repeat with remaining crepes.
- Before serving, add on two scoops of vanilla ice cream on top of each crepe and drizzle with the reduced champagne syrup.
Tara says
This was delicious! I loved everything about them. The pairing with ice cream was perfect.
Jonathan says
For the lightweights, you may want to hold off on using the entire bottle of champagne...I'm sure Tina can verify.
Thalia @ butter and brioche says
Can't think of a more perfect dish than this to celebrate 2015 with! Happy New Year.. these look delicious!
Tina Jui says
Happy New Year Bring it on, 2015!
Teresa jui says
Wow! this is a fancy crepes. Your husband is very lucky guy.
Tina Jui says
Haha, I will show this comment to him to remind him!