Crêpes Suzette with clove-flavored ice cream

You know the Christmas smell of cloves and orange? Or the smell of citrus and cloves in perfume? Imagine if you could eat that perfume, have you ever thought about that? Like wanting to eat shampoo and scented candles? Say no more, this is the recipe for you. In the form of crêpes Suzette. Trust me, it’s amazing.

We’ll do this in several steps. All can be prepared a few days in advance. Last step is the actual making of the “suzette part” – the serving of the desert.

Ingredients for the crêpes Suzette batter

250 g of flour
10 g of sugar
3 eggs
480 g of milk
30 g of butter
Pinch of salt
Vanilla from 1/2 vanilla pod
A big none-stick or cast iron pan
Baking sheet (or any other paper really)

How to fry the crêpes

Melt the butter an let it cool somewhat.
Mix all of the wet ingredients in a large bowl, including the cooled melted butter.
Sieve the flour (trust me, it makes things easier). Mix until there are no more lumps. Some people like adding all of the flour with half of the wet ingredients and then add the rest of the wet ingredients to avoid lumps. I had no problems with lumps, neither will you
Let the batter rest in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours. Over night is even better.
Cut paper stripes from a baking sheet. You’ll use these between the pancakes, simplifying the final step.
Heat up the pan on medium to high heat.
Add a little batter, and tip the pan around so that all of it is covered in a very thin layer of batter.
After a minute or two, turn it around. It should have a wonderful pale color with some light brown parts.
Fry it another minute or so and put it on a plate and a paper stripe. Repeat 6-9 until you have no batter left.
Cover them so they don’t dry out, and keep them refrigerated until it’s time to serve the desert. Unless it’s time now!

Ingredients for the clove ice cream

2 dl full cream, the fatter the better. We’re talking 40% (called butter cream in the US I believe) if possible. If not, then aim for the highest number.
2 dl of full milk (again, think fat content! High fat content means good ice-cream)
3-4 cloves (say 3 big or 4 small ones, they vary a little in size, but have tons of flavor so don’t overdo it!)
1 vanilla bean
1/2 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp of honey (make that 3 if it doesn’t feel sweet enough, teaspoons of honey is such an abstract concept)

How you make the clove ice cream

Mix the cream, milk, and honey in a saucepan.
Cut the vanilla bean and scrape out the content. Put the seeds and the whole pod into the cream mix.
Pulverize the cloves using a mortar, or simply buy powdered cloves.
Let simmer for about 15 minutes. Don’t let it boil! If you have a thermometer, use it! Don’t let the milk get over 90 degrees Celsius.
Now, fifteen minutes later, the cream-milk has all the flavors we want. Remove the vanilla pods and turn of the heat.
Mix about 1/3 tbsp of cornstarch (or any other powdered starch) with a little milk. Now whisk that milk while carefully pouring in the liquid cornstarch-mix. Now keep whisking while you turn on the stove on medium-low. Keep whisking until it thickens. If you don’t whisk, you’ll end up with nasty lumps of starch.
Now let it cool, or cool it yourself in a bowl set in ice-water.
Put the mixture in the refrigerator for at least an hour, it needs to be cool.
Pour it into an ice-cream maker, and turn the ice-cream maker on. Once you have a nice creamy ice-cream, cover it and keep it in the freezer until about 10 minutes before it’s time to serve it with your crepes Suzette.
If you don’t have an ice-cream maker, you can make one yourself. Watch the video, but basically the concept is the same as those cheap ice-maker machines. A wall of ice between two layers of something, and then scraping the ice-cream off the inner bowl.

Time to make the crêpes Suzette!

1 portion consists of:

3 crêpes
1 large scoop of clove ice-cream
juice and zest from 1/2 large orange (or a whole small orange)
2 tablespoons of hard liquor (I recommend a mix of 50% Cointreau and 50% dark rum)
3 tbsp of sugar (I use cane sugar)
A lot of butter

Now this is how you do it:

Heat up a skillet/pan and melt a lot of butter
Sprinkle some sugar on there, and let it melt a little. Careful so you don’t burn it, it’s easily done and tastes terrible!
Put a crêpe in there. Add some more sugar on the crepes, and fold it. Then fold it agan, into a little triangle.
Repeat 1-3 for all three crepes.
Add the orange juice, the zest and some more sugar (yup, sweet is what we want, it’s a dessert!)
Let the orange juice boil down a little, meaning the water evaporates with about 25% leaving 75% of the juice in there bubbling.
Add the liquor all over the pan and quickly set it on fire.
Serve the pancakes with the orange sauce from the pan.
A scoop of wonderful clove ice-cream
Top it off with a piece of orange for the looks of it.

This crêpes Suzette dessert is truly amazing.