Crepes are the original crowd-pleaser.
You can eat them hot or cold, use sweet or savoury fillings, they take minutes to cook and (with my boys) mere seconds to devour.
And crepes stalls are a staple at our favourite London street food haunts.
So you can imagine the excitement when Amazon sent us our very own Severin Crepes Maker to review**.
The machine is pretty much ready to go right out of the box — you just have to switch it on and let it warm up for a few minutes to get started. It comes with a mini instruction booklet, wooden spatula and ‘turning stick’.
We followed the crepes recipe in the booklet (we used ‘cup’ measurements as I can rarely be bothered with exact kgs/lbs). Since I was cooking with the babes, I substituted rum essence for vanilla extract. We whisked the batter by hand and skipped the salt and sugar (we find the toppings sweet enough).
The instructions advise to pour a slightly thicker scoop of batter onto the crepesmaker for your first attempts, as fatter crepes are easier to handle. I botched it a couple of times, but soon got the hang of using the spatula in circular motions.
Before long I was spreading and flipping like a pro, although none of my crepes turned out as beautifully proportioned as the ones featured on the packet!
What’s genius about this machine is the non-stick coating on the pan, ensuring you can turn the pancakes smoothly. It’s so easy to use that I let my 7-year-old have a go (under careful supervision as the crepe maker gets very hot).
Turns out Ezra was a much better crepes chef than me, making a small but perfectly formed pancake that he humbly declared ‘the best crepe ever’.
The Severin Crepes-Maker heats fast, you can adjust the temperature as you cook and it actually cools down fairly quickly afterwards. Cleaning up afterwards is straightforwards with a damp, lint-free cloth.
The machine’s quite bulky so if you’re as starved for storage as we are you might be wondering where to put it.
But don’t let that put you off if you’re thinking about getting one — the Severins Crepes-Maker is excellent value for money and makes deliciously light yet filling crepes.
Just ask the boys.
Severin Crepes Recipe
250g flour (2 cups)
4 eggs
50g melted butter (about 1/4 packet)
500ml milk (2 cups)
1/2 tsp salt (we skipped this)
Rum essence (we used vanilla extract)
1 tbs vanilla sugar (we skipped sugar)
Mix flour, eggs, milk (and sugar and salt if using) in a bowl. Add flavour extract (rum or vanilla) and melted butter and whisk until it’s about the consistency of double cream. Let it rest for an hour.
We like our crepes with lemon and sugar, butter and maple syrup or filled with Nutella and bananas, or vanilla ice cream!
How do you eat yours?
Severin Crepes-Maker, available at Amazon.co.uk at £36.99
**free review sample
