Banana, Brown Sugar and Soy Sour Cream Crepes

In Rehobeth Beach, Delaware there are many lovely things. There's a long boardwalk that leads to a kid's playland, rainbow flags that line the streets and wave in front of most businesses, a Victorian-themed hotel with exotic birds that fly around the lobby and land on people's shoulders... and of course, there's the beach itself, not quite as crowded as Ocean City, not as spare as Bethany, and filled with both families and adults on holiday. I used to go there every year, with my best friend, and really, the whole trip was about two things: chocolate covered strawberries and crepes from Le Crepe Suzette. Oh, we flirted with the ideas of piercings or henna tattoos, but crepes were really the main event for me. Cute foreign exchage students stood in a little boxy stand with the radio blaring, pouring streams of batter onto a huge round surface and using a squeegee to comb and trim the excess. After flipping, they would fill it with whatever you wanted: and for me, that meant bananas, brown sugar and sour cream.

It was only natural that I would learn to reproduce this treat at home, which I did to great effect with friends and dinner guests. But when I went vegan, I thought my crepe-capades had come to an end. (Afterall, they're so eggy!) But thank heavens, the wonderful vegan pioneers that came before us have veganized the recipe to absolute perfection. So now, even Rehoboth's famous crepes are an easy vegan feat.

There are plenty of vegan crepe recipes floating around the internet, and I know there are two in V'Con. However, I rely on the recipe from the fabulous Garden of Vegan by Sarah Kramer and Tanya Barnard (I've had this cookbook something like 5 years and I still use it all the time). Their recipe uses powdered egg replacer which I think works great, but of course, I've seen them done many other ways. (And a lot of people seem to avoid egg replacer for whatever reason.) Here are some of my own tried and true commandments of crepe-making:

1. Make the batter in a blender. This produces a smoother result, and you can pour it out of the blender rather than ladling it.
2. Pour the batter into the center of the pan then rapidly tilt it in a circular motion till the batter has spread.
3. The first one is always a throwaway (or eat-away.)
4. Wait till bubbles appear and the edges start to curl up before flipping.
5. Always make a comically small one for any pets or babies around.
6. When doing the filling, throw the crepe back on the pan to warm up the ingredients.

For me, although a pretty crepe is wonderful, its really all about the filling, baby. So the bananas, soy sour cream and brown sugar is one way to do it, and its fabulous, but here are some others I have obsessed over:

-fake nutella and bananas
-fake nutella and sour cherry jam (lust!)
-mangos and rasberries with powdered sugar
-almonds, butter and maple syrup
-sliced strawberries and balsamic reduction
-tofu scramble
-asparagus or broccoli and nootch cheezy sauce

Once you get the hang of it, you'll be cranking out more cruelty-free crepes than any stand at Rehobeth beach can shake a stick at. (But all love to Crepe Suzette anyways- I'm sure they'll come around and go vegan one of these days.) (And yep, they're still there.)