Makes: 8 inch cake (24 layers)
Time required: 3 hours
Difficulty: ★★★☆☆
Inspiration:
Having never made crepes or pancakes before (well … not cooking much in a pan at all), I was keen to try making a crepe cake. I’ve always loved the crepe cakes from the famous Lady M – stopping by the Lady M boutique on 40th street each time I’ve visited New York and I still remember how excited I was to stumble across a Lady M on a trip to Singapore where I got to introduce my sister (who is a huge fan of matcha) to the matcha crepe cake.
Initially, given it was my first time making crepes I wanted to keep the cake simple – like the Lady M ones – by just making it layers of crepe and cream. However, after exploring the nearby wet market in Hong Kong for fresh fruits I came home with a bunch of passionfruit and decided to incorporate those into the cake. I ended up with a crepe cake layered with passionfruit custard and chocolate ganache – as you could probably guess from my previous posts (passionfruit & chocolate eclairs, passionfruit & chocolate tart …) it is one of my favourite flavour combinations!
Elements of this cake:
- 24 crepes (~8 inch in diameter)
- passionfruit custard
- chocolate ganache
Ingredients:
Crepes (makes ~24 depending on the size of your pan)
- 600ml whole milk
- 1tsbp vanilla paste
- 2tsbp brandy
- 5 egg yolks
- 50g caster sugar
- 90g butter
- 300g all purpose flour
Passionfruit Custard:
- 700ml whole milk
- 3 eggs
- 3 egg yolks
- 200g caster sugar
- 65g cornstarch
- 1tsbp vanilla
- 85g butter
- 4 passionfruits, seeds removed
Chocolate Ganache:
- 100g dark chocolate
- 100ml cream
Instructions:
I’d recommend making the custard first, so it has time to cool in the fridge while you’re frying the crepes
Crepes:
- place all the ingredients except flour into a blender and blend on med speed
- add in the flour and blend again until well combined
- refrigerate for 2 hours (or overnight)
- lightly spray or grease a small pan (~8inch in diameter) and fry the crepe batter on medium heat. I used around 1/4 cup of batter for each crepe
- allow the crepes to cool by spreading on parchment paper while making the rest of the crepes
Passionfruit custard:
- place the whole eggs, egg yolks and cornstarch with 20g of the sugar in a bowl and whisk until smooth
- in a large saucepan, combine milk, remaining sugar and vanilla and bring to a boil
- remove from the heat and slowly pour in half the hot milk into the egg mixture while whisking to avoid cooking the eggs
- pour the milk and egg mixture back into the pot and heat until the mixture lightly bubbles
- remove from heat and stir in the passionfruit and butter
- pour the custard through a fine mesh and plastic wrap with the plastic touching the surface of the custard and store in the fridge to cool
Chocolate Ganache:
- bring cream to boil
- poor over chocolate and set aside for 2 mins. Stir together the melted chocolate and cream
Assembling the crepe cake:
- take one crepe and place it on a 8 inch cake board
- spread a thin layer of chocolate ganache over the crepe
- follow with a thin layer of passionfruit custard
- place the next crepe over the top and repeat until all the crepes are used up
You could also trim the edges of the crepes to a 8inch cake tin if you want cleaner edges, however I preferred the natural rough edges on my cake. I also coated the top of the cake in sugar and torched it for a bruleed finish
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