S6 E23 : Elegant and Impressive Crepe Cake

Are you looking for a different layer cake to wow your guests? A Crepe Cake might be the perfect thing! This week on Three Kitchens, Heather tries this recipe and has all the tips and tricks for you to make it too. 

A crepe cake, or mille crêpe ("thousand crepes"), is an elegant, no-bake French-inspired dessert featuring 15–30 thin, stacked crepes layered with pastry cream or whipped cream. It is made by cooking paper-thin crepes on a skillet, assembling them with filling, and chilling to achieve a delicate, sliceable texture. 

Heather made 22 crepes and filled her cake with two flavours of whipped cream -- one was mixed with lemon curd and the other was with mascarpone cheese and vanilla. The crepes are the thing that take a little time, but once you get going it's not too labour intensive. Then assembling the cake is easy. The most difficult part is waiting for it to set before you slice into it.  

Dust your final cake with a little icing sugar and you have a beautiful, unique dessert to impress your guests. 

Get the recipe on our website:  Crepe Cake 

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Transcript

Heather Dyer (00:11)
So for this sweet treat that I have in mind I will try something I've never made and have never eaten as far as I can recall and that is a Mil crepe cake.

Here we are again. Welcome to 3Kitchens Podcast. We are your hosts here on a Tuesday morning in January. Not sure when it's going to come out, but hopefully it's a nicer morning in another month when maybe it's not as gloomy. Cross your fingers.

Erin W (00:43)
Well, I mean, we can only

get more sunlight

Heather Dyer (00:46)
⁓ Although I think listeners probably already know, my name is Heather and this is Erin, my co-host.

Erin W (00:54)
Hi, Heather.

Heather Dyer (00:54)
Hi! ⁓ And we're kind of on a little bit of a roll. This is our second recording of this day when we are talking about sweet treats.

It's the time of year when you feel like you need just a little pick me up.

Erin W (01:08)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Dyer (01:09)
It's a long time between what I kind of think of as major holidays, like Christmas and then Easter. Because I don't count Valentine's Day, really, do you? No.

Erin W (01:16)
Yes. Yeah.

No,

it's not a holiday in any sense of the word according to me, but that's.

Heather Dyer (01:24)
Yeah, I it is an excuse.

Erin W (01:24)
it's a good reason for...

It's a good reason to have a sweet. Like, I think Valentine's Day and I'm like, mmm, something sweet. What's the point? right. Commercialized love. I'm sorry, I forgot.

Heather Dyer (01:33)
Otherwise... Exactly.

No.

commercialized love. a bit like forced fun.

I remember from my corporate life, I had a co-worker who called that forced fun. Which is totally what it is. And that's what Valentine's Day feels like a little bit. It's like forced romance or commercialized romance. Anyway.

Erin W (01:49)
Mmm.

Yep. Yep.

Yeah, I had a job once and

we would make everyone have lunch once a week and it was called mandatory fun time.

Heather Dyer (02:06)
Yeah, real fun.

Erin W (02:08)
But it was

I feel like I'm starting to institute that in my house now too. Like because my children are too cool to hang out with their parents because they're teenagers and so we're like mandatory family time.

Mandatory board game night. Mandatory hug from your mom.

Heather Dyer (02:23)
Mm-hmm.

mandatory

hug. well, sometimes you've got to do that.

So for this sweet treat that I have in mind I will try something I've never made and have never eaten as far as I can recall and that is a Mil crepe cake.

Are you familiar?

Erin W (02:48)
I've not heard it called that before. I've always just heard it called crepe cake, but... or crepe? no. It's a French word.

Heather Dyer (02:58)
Crepe,

I believe, the French. And even then, my pronunciation is probably terrible. We can say crepe. We can do that since we're English speakers and crepe is perfectly good for us. The meal means million. ⁓

⁓ I think it's an exaggeration

Erin W (03:18)
I'm gonna question your translation of French. Is that million or is that thousand? Yay! I knew something about French and it's on record. That's amazing.

Heather Dyer (03:25)
⁓ geez, you're right, it's thousand. You got it. You're right. You're absolutely right.

I have it in my head that meal sounds like million, obviously, because I'm... Yeah, you're right. Thousand. Thousand is still too many, okay? Yep. No, push up your glasses. Take the win. You're absolutely right. ⁓

Erin W (03:36)
It sounds like a million. Yeah, okay. Sorry.

Nerd alert!

Heather Dyer (03:47)
Nerds.

That's good. See when we talk about sharing a brain, this is what we mean. One of us has to pick up the slack when the other one's brain malfunctions. Yeah, so typically a crepe cake is more like, apparently the sweet spot is between 20 to 30 crepes. Nowhere near a thousand or a million. That's still quite a lot of crepes.

Erin W (04:04)
⁓ okay.

Hmm, no.

Yeah.

Heather Dyer (04:11)
Right? And in between each layer is a very thin layer of typically pastry cream.

Erin W (04:18)
⁓

Heather Dyer (04:19)
Vanilla is the classic flavor. So vanilla pastry cream between crepes. They're all stacked up and Then you slice it like a cake so that your cross section is strike little stripes, right? So somewhere along the way Japanese pastry chefs adopted this cake as it seems they do for many

Erin W (04:31)
Okay.

Gotcha!

Mmm.

Heather Dyer (04:45)
recipes around the world they take them and then like zhuzh them and create different flavor profiles and and kind of make them their own and then like make them famous somehow I don't know like you see cheesecake regular old cheesecake then when you go to the Japanese cheesecake

Erin W (04:50)
Yes.

Yes.

Heather Dyer (05:05)
bakeries, it's like whole other level of like shapes and designs and colors and flavors and

Erin W (05:12)
Yeah, it's like everybody adding in their specialty. Here, I'll bring this recipe, you bring that recipe, and then we'll see what we can make together with it. And then you come up with this like new wonderful creation that meshes the two together.

Heather Dyer (05:25)
Yeah, they seem to be the experts with fusion often, right? So they, I believe, from what I've read, ⁓ Japanese pastry chefs, pastry artists have kind of made it famous, but it's originally a French cake. And so it can, it doesn't just have to be vanilla between the crepes. It can be any flavor you like.

Erin W (05:28)
Mm, totally.

Heather Dyer (05:50)
Now having never made a pastry cream, I'm not sure if I should try to get creative.

Erin W (05:54)
Well, that's my first question is what

is pastry cream?

Heather Dyer (06:00)
Okay so from what I'm, it's like custard, it's like ⁓ a cooked, in this case vanilla, if you're going vanilla, cooked vanilla custard. So you have cream, ⁓ egg yolks, flour or cornstarch I believe. ⁓ I don't have any recipe in front of me but I, so you.

Erin W (06:16)
Okay, okay.

Heather Dyer (06:22)
Mix the one and then you put the heavy cream into the warmed cream into it and you whisk it all together and then it has to set to make like that custard. Yes, this stresses me out, you know, how you know how I do when I come to anything. You don't want it liquid running off those crepes. You want it to hold a nice uniformly thin stripe between right that layer.

Erin W (06:37)
And I also feel stressed by this.

Heather Dyer (06:50)
between the crepes.

Erin W (06:51)
Okay, okay.

Heather Dyer (06:52)
crossing my fingers everybody. Yeah.

Erin W (06:56)
So what kind of flavors are you thinking of putting in here?

Heather Dyer (06:59)
I don't know. mean, things sound so yummy and I kind of like, I want to experiment, but then I also kind of think maybe I should stick with vanilla and just like, try to make sure I get the pastry cream right instead of trying to make it creative. I don't know. I also kind of like the idea of having like two flavors and alternating them and having it look, you know.

Erin W (07:21)
that's a cool idea

too, yeah.

Heather Dyer (07:23)
I know yet. I had been looking and every time I come across a new one I'm like, ⁓ that's, strawberry that sounds fun. Or like some of them just even have fruit layered in with the cream. Like vanilla and mango. Like little thin slices of mango in it. So, my gosh, I think you could do it like so many different ways. I have to, I have to decide and like commit.

Erin W (07:38)
⁓

I have only ever used custard powder.

Heather Dyer (07:51)
Yeah, the birds' custard powder. I know, and I've only ever used it for bars. I do have some though. Nanaimo bar crepe cake would be really tasty. ⁓ Getting distracted now, see? ⁓

Erin W (07:52)
birds. That's the only custard Yes.

Alright.

the hungry is taking over.

Okay.

Heather Dyer (08:11)
Aaron, I don't even really have experience making crepes. So this whole thing is... ⁓

Erin W (08:19)
Crepe batter

is like a two to one. So two cups of liquid, one cup of flour, and like a bit of salt. Like it's almost nothing. an egg, egg. There's egg in there too. Can't remember how many. I make crepes sometimes for my kids in the morning, because they're spoiled rotten beasts.

Heather Dyer (08:38)
They sure are.

Erin W (08:42)
they're actually really quick to make,

Heather Dyer (08:40)
I love crepes, but I never made, I don't think I've ever made them.

Well, I hope so.

Erin W (08:45)
And I can

Heather Dyer (08:48)
And I might need to borrow your nonstick pan. Because I don't have such a thing. I don't know how that has happened.

Erin W (08:46)
No kidding.

yes.

I'll send you, I'll send my pans your way and you can choose which size because I have a larger one and a smaller one.

Heather Dyer (09:00)
Yeah. okay.

see what the recipe

I can't wait to try. Okay. Wish me luck.

Erin W (09:09)
this is fantastic. I love this idea. Okay.

I bestow the luck upon you.

Heather Dyer (09:17)
Yes, yes,

señor. ⁓ senora. You know I don't speak Spanish. Where'd that even come from?

Erin W (09:20)
I you're.

Heather (09:50)
all set. Let's talk about how to make a crepe cake.

Erin W (09:54)
Yes, please.

Heather (09:54)
Yes please, because you want to go make it?

Erin W (09:56)
Because I want to go and make it and because it was absolutely adored over here and a couple of members of my family may have eaten it too fast and said, I don't even remember what was in the filling, but it was really good. I didn't take time to notice.

Heather (10:16)
I hope you noticed. Did you notice?

Erin W (10:19)
Well, this is what I would, I was like, what is this filling? And everyone was asking me, because I was sharing this, was like, check out what Heather made. And everyone's like, ooh, what is it filled with in the layers? And I was like, I don't know yet. So.

Heather (10:31)
⁓ okay.

Okay. So let's quickly talk about making crepes. It feels like everybody but me has made crepes before and so knows how to make them. And this is not like rocket science. ⁓ The recipe I used was all purpose flour, eggs, ⁓ milk, melted butter, granulated sugar, salt and vanilla. So we have a

sweet crepe and I used vanilla paste which can sometimes have a bit more of an intense vanilla flavor and it also doesn't add any extra liquid if that matters in a recipe. I don't think it matters in this one but ⁓ for some you might find a paste more useful.

Erin W (11:07)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Heather (11:19)
So you're just going to mix that all together to make a batter. And then the recipe that I used recommended putting it through a sieve to get out any lumps. And so I did. I'm like, I don't know, maybe I don't want lumps in my crepes. I don't know if it helped or didn't made any difference at all, but I did. Then using the lovely nonstick pans that Erin lent to me.

Erin W (11:29)
⁓

Heather (11:45)
I used the smaller one, which I think is about eight or nine inch, would you say? Something like that, nine inch probably. I didn't measure it,

Erin W (11:49)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's the smaller one. That's my preferred crepe pan as well, so agree.

Heather (11:55)
Yeah, I think it's

a good size for this cake. If you just look at the pan, if you're trying to decide, look at the pan and think, how big do I want a cake? If you want it even bigger, then go for a bigger pan. But if you want, that's a pretty standard cake size, I would say. Right? Like a layer, think layer cake. ⁓

Erin W (11:59)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, like most

of your springform pans are eight or nine inches. So perfect, right?

Heather (12:22)
Yeah. Okay, so I did what you had kind of told me, which is to kind of put about a quarter cup of batter in the pan and swirl it so that it very thinly coats the bottom of the pan. Now, I don't know what kind of kitchen wizard you are. I mean, I know you are a kitchen wizard. I know you've got some tricks up your sleeve.

Erin W (12:40)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (12:48)
There was no way that was moving. You know how you said when it's when you can shake it and it moves in the pan it's done? Not one, this is not moving. And I even put the time this recipe said to just kiss the bottom of the pan with butter like the tiniest little sweep of butter on the bottom. ⁓ Those crepe, the first couple I did was a bit of a mess. They were not moving, they were not, there was no

And by the time, so if I just left them there thinking, well, they have to lift the way Aaron said, it was like so dark and crispy. I'm like, well, I don't want crispy layers in my cake. I want soft crepes in my cake, right? Crispy edges, sure. Anyway, so I'm like, I don't know why it's not working for me, but Aaron is probably better at this, but that's okay. So what I did was when the edges started looking brown and they looked like it was kind of,

Erin W (13:16)
Yeah, yeah.

Sorry.

⁓ They kind of come up from the sides, right? Yeah.

Heather (13:40)
curling just the littlest bit.

Yeah, then I just slip my spatula, got it underneath enough to like kind of lift it, stick my spatula under, give it a flip, an extra 20 seconds maybe on the other side, and then I just flop the whole thing out onto a plate. So I would guess, I would guess that they took maybe two, two and a half to three minutes per crepe.

Erin W (13:57)
Perfect.

Heather (14:05)
You think? I don't know. I didn't time it, but it took me quite a while to get through this whole bowl of batter.

Erin W (14:06)
That's all.

Yeah.

Heather (14:12)
It was probably over an hour of making crepes. I don't know. Maybe I'm just not like a machine cranking a method. Next time? Yeah, next time I'll be faster because I won't have the trial and error of the first few and getting my temperature right on my gas burner, always an issue.

Erin W (14:22)
It takes what it takes, right?

Yes. That's what I assume

would have been the hardest part is figuring out the temperature for your gas burner. Yeah.

Heather (14:38)
Yeah, because you want it as this so helpful recipe says, not too hot and not too cold. It's the Goldilocks and the temperature. I'm like, helpful. Not. Thanks a lot. I won't even tell you what blog.

Erin W (14:48)
Yeah, that's real nice. Thanks. This temperature is very specific.

Find the specific temperature.

Heather (14:56)
It's like, yeah, it's very

top is different.

Erin W (14:58)
I think everyone's stove

is different, so it makes sense to say that, but it's also kind of...

Heather (15:02)
yeah when it's your first time making them it's like well that doesn't help me but anyway i it did take a little fiddling in the beginning so i probably spent more time in the beginning just trying to figure shit out like that so next time i make them i will be practiced and i'll know i'll know what i'm doing

Erin W (15:18)
you'll be the crepe

master. Maybe you

Heather (15:20)
Quick master,

as I went along, I found like some of them, maybe I had just slightly different ⁓ amount of batter or slightly different swirling happening, but some of them were a little smaller, some were a little bigger. And I just was keeping in mind that when I was going to put them together into a cake, I would try to alternate a little bit so you don't have all the big ones on the bottom or all the small ones on the bottom or like, so that in the end, your cake is fairly.

Erin W (15:45)
Right.

Heather (15:48)
sturdy like you don't want it to slide or you know what I mean or have weird bigger layers or whatever.

Erin W (15:52)
Yeah, yeah.

You don't want

suddenly to have like a layer that flops out or a layer that makes it cone shaped. It was fairly even and cylindrical. A little bit.

Heather (16:02)
It does get a little cone shaped, but that's how

if you look at pictures of this type of cake, they all do a little bit, a little bit as they go, which I actually think looks cool when you cut into it and it's sort of like this slight top.

Erin W (16:10)
Mm-hmm.

The way

it looks when you cut into it is truly incredible. That was, yeah.

Heather (16:20)
should put a picture in here. Note

Okay so now for what you put between these crepes. ⁓

Erin W (16:26)
What do you put between these?

Heather (16:30)
Okay, remember I was talking about pastry cream versus whipped cream. my God, I really had some anxiety about what I was going to put in this. Should I do coconut? Should I do dairy? Should I do? Yeah, and I didn't know until the day I made it, I prepared kind of for almost anything because I didn't know what I was going to do and I kept reading conflicting things.

Erin W (16:43)
You had me going too.

Heather (16:53)
There's Chantilly cream which is like a sweetened whipped cream I think.

Erin W (16:55)
Right.

Heather (16:59)
Pastry cream, which is kind of like a custard. I just want to see what this thing was called. Diplomat cream, which is pastry cream plus whipped cream. And then someone, sometimes they use cream cheese, mascarpone filling. Like, ⁓ it's there's so many options.

Erin W (17:01)
Okay, yeah.

there were an endless amount of fillings

to choose from.

Heather (17:21)
and I got really overwhelmed. And that's when I was like, I texted you, I'm like, okay, I'm starting to make crepes. The possibility for overwhelm is imminent. Okay, so what I did, when I was surfing around looking at different recipes, I found a crepe cake from Martha

Erin W (17:28)
You

Heather (17:39)
I took inspiration from her. I think she had layers with lemon curd and then other layers that had that mascarpone whipped cream situation going. And that's what she did. So I took the inspiration and I made a big bowl of whipped cream using lactose free heavy cream. And then I split it. I scooped out half. I had two bowls of whipped cream with

One of the bowls I mixed vanilla, vanilla bean paste, mascarpone I just kind of used my rubber spatula and like folded it in and mixed it well together. Then the other half the whipped cream I mixed in the same weight, 50

Erin W (18:15)
Okay.

Heather (18:20)
grams, I think it was, of lemon curd, which I bought. I did not make it. I'll just tell you right now, I was not fucking around with making lemon curd. I bought it in a little jar at the store. Instead of like Martha had done a layer of curd, I mixed my curd with whipped cream.

Erin W (18:31)
Thank you.

Heather (18:38)
So I alternated the two fillings, the whipped cream plus mascarpone and vanilla with whipped cream and lemon curd. Did you taste any of that when you ate it?

Erin W (18:43)
No shit.

No shit.

So

I was like something is like whipped cream, but there's whipped cream and.

I did not pick out that there were two different

Heather (18:59)
was hoping I could pick out the flavors but apparently not. Maybe I needed more lemon.

Erin W (19:04)
Maybe I needed to eat it slower also.

Heather (19:07)
That's a challenge.

Erin W (19:09)
This was freaking amazing. my God, did this taste good?

Heather (19:13)
I loved it too. So what you do when you put it, put, obviously you put a crepe down, you put a little scoop of filling and you don't want it to go all the way to the edge because you don't want to squish out. So you kind of spread it a little bit, put another crepe on top and press it down a bit so that it is stable and sticks, kind of sticks the two together. And then you keep doing this, keeping in mind, like I said, the sizes of your crepes alternating if you have some small ones, so they kind of get stuck in the middle.

Erin W (19:24)
Exactly. Okay.

Okay.

Heather (19:41)
And then at the end dust some powdered sugar over the whole thing and then you can chill, you have to chill it for at least two hours or overnight. ⁓ And then you can slice it just like a cake slice. ⁓ it just looks so cool.

Erin W (19:47)
⁓ okay. Okay.

I couldn't believe

how easily and how well this sliced because I was kind of having that like, as I served it up when you brought it over to our house and it got eaten fast. I was like, when I went to cut it in half, was like, ooh, is this gonna like, you know how sometimes you cut into a cake or something and it just kind of like smushes everything out and slides around. And I was like, I gotta be so careful. But this cut.

so smooth and like perfectly and there was no slipping or smushing all the layers stayed like beautifully apart it didn't look like wow like it was this was incredible ⁓ so even yeah

Heather (20:35)
Yeah. And they actually turned out quite even. The layers, I'm like all

amazed at myself right now. Like I did that.

Erin W (20:45)
⁓ well, as my kids always say, Mom, you cook savory foods good, but Heather's the much better baker. but in this house, you have the you you hold like they saw it and they were like, of course, Heather made this. And I was like, indeed. I love that this is like they're like, you do this good, Mom, but Heather's baked goods are just the best and like so good.

Heather (20:51)
No, I'm not though.

That is

And

the beauty of it is you don't have to bake anything. Once you've made all those crepes, then it's just assembly.

Erin W (21:15)
And what you did for this filling worked fantastically because it didn't...

make the crepes mushy or like you know it could make them soggy if it was too wet and but like all those crepes were like when you bit ⁓ the texture when you bit it ⁓ everything about this was just so fucking good heather my god

Heather (21:22)
Uh-huh.

Yay! Well, I think also that's chilling it to set it is important. oh, and make sure your crepes are cold when you start to assemble, don't have warm crepes. Because if you tried to slice it right after you assembled it, I think it would be too soft and sliding. I think you need a bit of time for the cream to kind of like,

Erin W (21:39)
the cake.

Heather (21:57)
sets a bit in there. The mascarpone, I think helps it be a bit more stable too. So if you're worried about just doing the cream, but I mean, lemon curd doesn't do that. Lemon curd is quite soft and moist. So I was worried about the lemon layer. I was worried it was going to be too soft, but then I thought, hey, if Martha did it and it worked, she wouldn't steer me wrong, would she?

Erin W (22:11)
slippery.

If Martha can do it, then so can I. ⁓

Heather (22:22)
Why not? And

also I told like, don't let it sit till tomorrow. Like eat it. It's something that you want to assemble, chill and eat. Cause the crepes do get a bit soft.

Erin W (22:32)
This was incredible. This was so, so very good. This will be what I make for a birthday cake this year.

Heather (22:42)
And there's so many filling ideas I came across like there's so many different things you could do if you just get creative with it.

Erin W (22:49)
But what you did, I think, was just like brilliant. It... my god, was pr- I... Why isn't there anymore? I want to taste it again!

Heather (22:57)
I know,

so do I. Now that we're talking about it, I'm like, I wish I could eat it today.

Erin W (23:03)
Mmm.

Yeah, that was incredible.

Heather (23:06)
Wouldn't

it be cool if you, I don't know if you had a little pan, like an individual size pan to make crepes. I mean, it would take a while, but what if you made an individual size crepe cake, a little bitty crepe cake? Wouldn't that just be like so fancy? Yeah, little personal crepe cake. Yeah, you could do it shorter, but like, and small, and just like a little piece.

Erin W (23:25)
and like little personal cakes, like almost a petit four, but crepe cake.

Heather (23:34)
my God, it would be adorable.

I need to get a nonstick pan. Yay, success.

Erin W (23:36)
Hmm.

Ugh.

This was... I can't even, Heather. Can't even.

Too good.

Erin W (24:06)
Especially if you're making a thousand of these puppies. Or a million!

Heather Dyer (24:08)
or a million jeez