Posted by Laura on February 26th, 2010
Julia Child’s Crepes Suzette
Filed under: Cooking, Uncategorized
Overall: 
(1/5) (most likely due to user error)
Preparation Difficulty: (4/5)
Crepes Themselves (without the Suzette part): (5/5)
I made these the same day I made Julia Child’s Beouf Bourguignon, a snowbound blizzardly day of all-day cooking. I followed the recipe to the letter - even bought a food processor to do so! Orange-almond butter filling, cognac, flambe, the works.
It took a while to get a handle on cooking the crepe itself - even then, I was never able to simply flip it as Julia suggests. I tried using my hands (though I don’t have the hot hands, so that didn’t last long), but then settled on the hold-your-breath-and-hope-you-don’t-break-it spatula method. After only 5 ruined crepes, I started turning out decent ones, so we were all excited to eat them. A plain one was delicious!
But then…
Aaah, but then.
Then I added the orange-almond butter, rolled them up, but them in a baking dish, drizzled with sugar, and baked. When that was done, we flambed them. I was afraid to do it, with visions of high-arching flames shooting to the ceiling, so my husband did it. Not that scary in real life, actually - a quick burst of flame, only about 2 inches high, and then it settled down and disappeared.
And then we tasted them.
Awful. Soggy, sticky sweet, almost cloying in the sweetness and almost wet in their sogginess. This had to be user error somewhere along the way, but I can’t figure out where. I followed the recipe to the letter, so who knows. We ended up eating a few, then throwing the rest away.
