28 layers of delicious

Imagine a delicately sweet cake made of layer after layer of thin crispy crepes, filled between each is a delicious vanilla bean pastry creme.  Just a small piece of this wonderful dessert is all the comfort food I need.

For many years crepes have been our traditional Chrismas day treat, but only recently have I transformed them into a cake.

Preparing this masterpiece requires only some crepe-making skills and the courage to believe that you can sucessfully stack them to create the many layered cake.

Begin with a crepe batter which has been well-chilled.  Heat the skillet over medium high, adding only a small pat of butter.  Pour about 3 tablespoons of batter into the hot skillet and swirl until a thin layer of batter covers the whole bottom of the pan.  Cook until the edges curl in a bit and become a lovely golden brown.  

Flip this thin crepe over and let it toast a little longer.

Repeat until you have 20 to 30 crispy beautiful crepes (the number of crepes you have depends on the size pan used - I used an eight inch pan and made 30 crepes).

To create the cake, simply place a crepe on a plate, spread with the lovely pastry creme and add another crepe.

Continue to stack the crepes, filling with the creme until, magically, you have a cake!

Dust lightly with powdered sugar; chill for a couple of hours...and serve!

Crepes:

6 tablespoons butter

1 cup milk

3 tablespoons sugar

Pinch of salt

3 large eggs

3 cups flour

Heat butter until it begins to turn a light golden brown, remove from heat.

Heat milk (don't let it boil-remove from heat just before boiling).

Combine flour, salt, sugar and eggs.  Mix well.

Combine butter and milk, and pour slowly into flour mixture, stirring.

(I do most of this in the food processor, but it can be done by hand mixing too)

Cool this batter for at least one hour.

To prepare crepes, follow directions above.