The Perfect Cake For You

Valentine’s Day has just passed and it has been lovely for many to celebrate with their special ones. What does Valentine’s mean to you? Does it carries any significance to you at all? What’s your preferred way to celebrate it?

During this season, it feels right for me to share the cake my husband loves the most ~ crepe cake. Over the years, I have made numerous crepe cakes of a wide variety of flavors – from the most humble, i.e vanilla, to the more exotic such as durian (a spiky-looking tropical fruit with a strong aroma. For those who love it, it has the sweetest fragrance but those who hates it thinks that it has a pungent odor! Check out this link on Wikipedia to find out more about this fruit).

Crepe cake is relatively easy to make if you are familiar with the knows-hows. It only takes a little practice and maybe few mistakes to make the perfect crepe 🙂 . If you don’t have an oven, crepe cake might be a good option. Well, if only you are thinking to make one!!

The crepe is cooked on the stove top with a non-stick round pan on a well-controlled heat. I like to use low heat so that it gives me ENOUGH time to swirl the batter on the pan and ensure that the crepe achieves the right shape and thickness. Take extra care to flip it as it can tear easily. I prefer to use fingers than a spatula to flip over! Since crepe is thin, it doesn’t take long to be cooked. Overcooking will toughen the gluten which in turn makes the crepe tough! Use a good recipe so that it produces the right texture which has more or less the ‘melt-in-the-mouth’ sensation. If the crepe is chewy and hard to break apart, it does not blend well with the filling which usually is delicate.

The main ingredient for the filling is whipped cream. I prefer to add a little of cornstarch to stabilize the cream so that the cake stays intact. The option for the flavor is endless. Think out of the box and make the fillings in accordance to your liking. If you love fruits, why not slice some of your favourite fruits such as strawberries or mangoes and add in between the layers. If you love cheese, make a blend of whipped cream and cream cheese. If you love nuts, then incorporate some in it.

Here I share photos of two crepe cakes that I have made:- chocolate and matcha flavor. To make the chocolate flavor more intense, I added cocoa powder to the crepe batter and finished off with a layer of ganache. And to heighten the matcha flavor for the matcha crepe cake, I dusted a layer of matcha powder on top of the cake.

I usually make 15 – 20 layers of crepe to make one crepe cake. If you want to add volume to the cake, then cook more crepes. Extra care has to be taken when assembling the cake. In order to spread the whipped cream (or any other fillings) with ease, I chill the cream for at least an hour prior to assembling the cake. The ratio of crepe and filling for my crepe cakes is approximately 1:3. But that’s up to you. Personally, I love whipped cream and choose to make my fillings much thicker than the crepe!