It’s citrus season in the Southern Hemisphere; and although I have to admit(embarrassingly) until I cared for my own lemon tree I had never really thought of citrus as a winter and spring fruit. We now have a lemon tree which my husband and I have slowly nursed back to health. Currently, it is heavy with large, ripe, bright yellow lemons. We don’t want to waste any of them, so this will be “the month of lemons”, starting with a plant-based Crêpes Suzette.
The origins of Crêpes Suzette is, like many famous recipes, hotly disputed and full of contradictory claims. There are also many variations of it, and many may have been created to suit locality of the cook or the selection of citrus available at the time; with that in mind, I have used a combination of mandarin and lemon juice, which according to some sources would have been truer to an original recipe, but I wanted to make it a lower-sugar version.
The trick to avoiding too much added sugar is making sure the juice mix is nearly sweet enough to drink, sweeten to taste. It’s the potato starch that makes the juice thicken with a nice sheen.
As with a “classic” crêpe recipe, this plant-based crepe works with sweet or savoury dishes so will fold or wrap many different fillings.
Crêpe Recipe
Serves 3-4
Makes 6-9 crêpes using a 7″ crêpe pan
Ingredients:
- 50g chickpea flour
- 50g gluten-free plain flour
- 1 teaspoon nutritional yeast
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/4 teaspoon Himalayan sea salt
- 250ml unsweetened oat milk or plant-based milk
- 50g firm tofu
- 1 cup favourite citrus juice – can be a blend
- 2 tsp potato starch
- sweetener of choice
Method:
Blend all ingredients to a smooth batter and rest for at least 30 minutes.
Use a 1/4 cup measure or a 60ml ladle to make your crêpes.
Mix potato starch into your choice of citrus juice, gently heat in a small pot, stirring until it thickens. If it goes lumpy, whiz it in a blender. Sweeten to taste with your favourite sweetener, I use a mixture of juices so I don’t need much sweetener.
You could serve crêpes with different toppings, Pear & Cherry or raspberry ripple
