Worldwind Crepe Bar! - elisa Irvolino

So I know my name here is Whilrwindmommy, but this post is dedicated to the “World Wind Travelers” that came to brunch yesterday. You see we have a set of very good friends, Actually, the BEST kind of friends! The kind that come running when you need, the kind that love your kids like if they were your own and the kind that you can just laugh and talk with for hours! We are known to be very loud so get togethers at our homes are better! We all recently went on vacation so we decided to get together and share our adventures. So it became the “Travel Brunch”. On our 24th anniversary no less!

What was on the menu, you ask? Crepes!!! My son had asked for them the week before so I got inspired. I always made them crepes when they were younger. Not so much lately. It was never just crepes, it was always a feast. All kinds of sauces and fruit along with bacon and eggs. So we decided to reinstate our brunch tradition.We started the day before. By we I mean my husband and I. We came home from a BBQ and got to work.

First in the line up was the mixed berry sauce. This was one is pretty easy. It’s one large bag of frozen mixed berries, one cup of sugar, one tsp of lemon and a tiny bit of very good vanilla. I prefer Dominican vanilla and I happen to bring some back with me from my trip. I place everything in a skillet and let cook down slowly until its nice and thick. This took about an hour that night. If I am in a rush, I just add a little flour. Just make sure to make slurry with it first so there are no lumps in it. Here’s a quick reel on how mine was coming along.

It is a-lot of sauce but we use it for all kinds of things the rest of the week. It’s great over ice cream, pound cake, or top with cool whip. Yummmmmm!

Second, is my personal favorite. The Cream Cheese Sauce. This is a recipe I invented years ago. It calls for one bar of cream cheese, one can of condensed milk, a little lemon zest and the juice of half a lime. That’s it! Super simple. Throw it all in the food processor and serve!

The next one was the most labor-intensive one. For one, it was my first time doing it. I got the idea from a Rhee Drummond post. On her post, she had a crepe bar and served lemon curd as one of her fillings. That just sounded amazing! My sister-in-law from instagram.com/goodstuff95 first introduced me to lemon curd. She is an amazing baker. You must try her raspberry lemon bars. To die for!!!! Since I’ve never made lemon curd, I looked for a recipe. I came across preppykitchen.com and used that recipe. It was fairly easy. It was just time-consuming. Mine would not thicken at all!. I have an electric stove so it’s hard to control the heat. I had to play with it a little. But I have to tell you it was so worth it! Here it is in the beginning stages.

For the actual crepe, I have been using Alton Brown’s recipe for years. It’s very simple. Add everything in at one time and blend. We made this at night as well. We stored everything in the refrigerator and went to bed!

The next day was much easier since we did so much ahead. I took out all the sauces so they could be at room temperature. I warmed up two pans and got started on the crepes. The trick is to get the pans nice and hot. I didn’t even have a throwaway one this time!! It took one hour to make about 80 crepes, 2 at a time. Here I am at work! The end pic is the actual spread.

I served Nutella as our final sauce. Nothing fancy, just delicious, simple Nutella! I did have my sons display it like the rest of the sauces. They just wanted to know why we couldn’t just put the jar on the table! LOL

For fillings my friend brought an amazing tray of fresh fruit. We made bacon and sausage for the meat lovers. Our other friends brought everything for mimosas and we were set! We served al fresco to get in the last bit of summer! We spent all day just reliving our vacations. It was amazing to share our adventures!