ABC - Quintessential Cheese Blintzes

Sweet cheese-filled Blintzes on homemade red fruit preserves

For this month's ABC baking project, I asked Toni of Big Smiles and Bigger Hips to select a recipe for us, and she chose the Quintessential Cheese Blintzes. I "met" Toni through the Heavenly Cake Bakers and was very happy when she decided to join ABC. One of the things I like about Toni is her honest feedback on the goodies she bakes as part of the baking group. If she doesn't like a recipe, she'll tell you :o) She also has adorable little helpers.

Blintzes (also called Blinis and a very other names) are similar to crepes with a sweet or savory filling. My (late) Russian friend, Svetlana, made Blinis for me that were filled with ground beef. That was my first (and yummy) encounter with Blinis/Blintzes. So I was very eager to try Flo Braker's sweet filling made with farmer's cheese, sugar, citrus zest, and a little salt. I substituted cream cheese for the farmer's cheese. Other substitutes that work well are ricotta cheese and small curd cottage cheese.

If you're a passionate baker and like to join the Avid Baker's Challenge club, please email me at HanaasKitchen [at] live [dot] com.

SMS - Crêpes

It's been a while since baked along other SMS-ers but now I'm back. On this week's menu: Mom's French Pancakes (aka crêpes), chosen by Jaime of Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats. What a perfect choice to ease back into SMS baking. It's easy, no oven required, and it's delicious. Thank you, Jaime, for such a wonderful pick.

Growing up, my sisters and I used to eat crêpes a lot. In Dutch they're called "pannekoeken". Made either from scratch or from a mix. We would fill them with jam, or drizzle them with honey or "stroop" which is a dark sugar-based syrup (darker and thicker than the pancake syrup here), or... (don't laugh) brown sugar. Guess which one was my favorite filling? :o)

I made the batter last night using my immersion blender (quarter recipe). When I got up in the morning around 4:30am, I made 4 crêpes. I ate 2: one filled with homemade Plum Preserves and the other filled with... I'll let you guess that one :o) I'm fully prepared to be ridiculed :o)

A quarter recipe gave me 4 beautiful crêpes

Perfect breakfast: a Plum Jam filled crêpe, a brown sugar filled crêpe and some grapes! Bon appetit!

Final thoughts/tips:

• I made a couple changes to the recipe: I added a bit of vanilla and I used 1% milk without any problems.
• When you flip the crêpe over, I like to lightly press and continuously rotate it so it gets browned evenly all over.
• My go-to recipe for crêpes has a lower egg-to-milk/flour ratio which I prefer, but Melissa's crêpes were very tasty too.
• A big thanks to Jaime for a wonderful pick. You can find the recipe HERE.
• Don't forget to check out the other SMS bakers.