Brittany is a fantasy land of crêpes. My family and I would spend a week of vacation there every year, often in Carnac. We would eat crêpes every single night, to the sparkly-eyed delight of my sister and myself. Over time we built an entire itinerary of favorite crêperies to visit.

In Brittany, savory crêpes are made with buckwheat flour and are called “galettes de sarrasin” (or “crêpes de sarrasin”), whereas sweet crêpes are made with wheat flour and are referred to as “crêpes de froment”.

Traditional buckwheat galettes are made with just buckwheat flour, salt, and water, and they are cooked them on a billig, a wide, round cooking surface made of cast iron, completely flat with no rim. But 100% buckwheat crêpes are next to impossible to cook in a regular skillet on the stovetop (believe me, I’ve tried) so the recipe I’m sharing today is one that’s adapted for the home kitchen.

You can include whatever fillings tickle your fancy, but the most traditional (and, in my opinion, best) combo is la complète, garnished with a fried egg, cooked ham and grated cheese (usually gruyère or comté). At crêperies I like to order a complète with fresh tomatoes (in summer) or cooked mushrooms (the rest of the year).

If you’re hosting a crêpe party, it’s fun to prepare different kinds of fillings — cheese, ham, grated cheese, goat cheese, cooked leeks, cooked mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, smoked fish — and let each guest compose his or her own galette.

For dessert, a buckwheat and chocolate crêpe is a treat you won’t soon forget.

And of course, serve them all with bowls of hard apple cider or buttermilk (lait ribot), as they do in Brittany!

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[Apple and Date Crumble]

And this is the third (and final) item I baked for last Sunday’s Goûter de Cousins, thinking it would be nice to make an apple crumble in addition to the two cakes.

The idea was to serve something a little lighter and fruit-based for those of us who may have a small appetite, or may want to go the healthier route, or may be on a diet, or may dislike both chocolate and orange. As it turned out, nobody fit in either of these categories (or hid it well) but the crumble, to which I decided to add dates for a little twist to keep myself interested, was a very nice addition to the menu nonetheless. It was enthusiastically wolfed down.

As it happens, my darling sister Céline assisted me in the making of this. She has just moved into her new apartment, a luminous and spacious affair just a ten-minute walk from my apartment <overjoyous whoop>, and this is the first time she has her own “real” kitchen. What I mean by “real” is, in which you actually have room to take more than one step at a time, which boasts more than three square-inches of counter space, has an actual oven, and more than one and a half cooking ranges – one of them being half covered by the unavoidable clutter. So she has a great kitchen now, but what she doesn’t have (yet) is… baking tools! cooking paraphernalia! kitchen toys! ten years’ worth of gift ideas!

She still wanted to take part in the preparation though, and she offered to come and help : so while she efficiently peeled the apples I whizzed the topping, and we chatted while the crumble baked…

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Gâteau à l’orange et au gingembre

This is another cake I baked for our Goûter de Cousins last Sunday. I tasted my first flourless orange cake about a year ago at Rose Bakery, and absolutely loved it. I had tried to reproduce it then, and had made an Orange and Poppyseed version, adapting a recipe found on the web. It was really good — the orange and poppyseed pairing was great — but the texture wasn’t quite what I was looking for.

This time, I drew inspiration from Trish Deseine‘s book Mes petits plats préférés. Her recipe for “Gâteau de clémentines pochées” (Poached Clementine Cake) is pretty similar to the one I used a year ago — and one that appears in a Nigella Lawson cookbook as well — with just a little more almonds and a little more sugar.

As you know, following a recipe without throwing in my two cents just isn’t as much fun, so I decided to make an orange and ginger version of this cake, adding fresh ginger and candied ginger to the batter. The oranges I used were three of the small blood oranges from my last Campanier basket. I also lowered the amount of sugar, used baking soda in place of baking powder, shortened the baking time, and added an icing with pearl sugar.

This cake was a real hit and I received lots of compliments about it. Incredibly moist and flavorful, with the wonderful taste of orange marmalade, the subtle kick of ginger and a delicious sugar crust, it also looks beautiful. I will definitely make this again while the orange season lasts.

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[Chocolate Cake with Caramelized Hazelnuts]

Last Sunday afternoon, my sister Céline and I organized a “Goûter de Cousins” at my place. We invited those of our cousins who live in Paris, which amounts to about a dozen. Most of them we only see once a year at family holiday parties – some a little more, some way less – and we thought it would be nice to start a little tradition of same-generation gathering.

The added bonus of this very friendly goûter party was, of course, that I had the perfect excuse for some serious baking : you have to feed all those guys, right?

One of the things I made was this luscious chocolate cake. I was trying to reproduce the Petit Gâteau Chocolat Noisette I had tasted and enjoyed so much back in December. Derrick had made his own attempt, had emailed me about it, and we had discussed what the best approach was.

I followed his advice and used his favorite brownie recipe from Cook’s Illustrated (if there’s one guy out there who knows what he’s talking about, it’s definitely Derrick, so I felt pretty confident about it). The only modifications I made were to use just one kind of chocolate instead of two, and to add a little amount of ground hazelnuts to the batter. Then I toasted and caramelized some hazelnuts, sprinkled them on top of the brownie before baking, and added some confectioner’s sugar after the cake had baked and cooled.

The result is very close to what I was looking for, and absolutely delicious. The cake has a rich chocolate taste with an excellent texture, dense and chewey – but not excessively so, and the topping of caramelized hazelnuts is perfect.

I think the main difference was that the Petit Gâteau, being Petit and individual, included slightly more cakey edges : mine was a big cake cut into squares, which necessarily changes the texture somewhat.

I’ll also have to remember that making caramelized hazelnuts is extremely easy, and they would make for a great food gift, golden and crunchy and tasty and sweet, packaged up in a pretty crystal bag.

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