Towel Roll Cake – Crepe Roll Cake

One of the best options for a Sunday breakfast, without a doubt, are homemade pancakes or crepes. Both recipes are incredibly easy to make, versatile and allow us to combine them with both sweet and savory. Especially the latter. Today I show you how to make a Towel Roll Cake – Crepe Roll Cake.

The name is quite particular, it is not my invention, and refers to the technique to roll a towel. I found these crepe cakes on Pinterest and, as you might guess, they fascinated me. I think it’s a wonderful idea to enjoy an elaboration that, for sure, almost everyone likes. It is different, eye-catching and very, very easy to make, something that I consider very important. Especially if we prepare it first thing in the morning. With this preparation you can enjoy a cake, very attractive visually, in a few minutes. Not to mention that the result is wonderful.

Towel Roll Cake.

We can also find it as Crepe Roll Cake. About this recipe I have not found much information, only that it is a fairly recent creation (a couple of years) and, surely, has been an evolution of the famous crepe cakes that became fashionable about ten years ago together with the way of eating a crepe, stuffed and rolled. It is still the same recipe, only with a different presentation format.

To make this crepe cake we only need to mix the ingredients and cook them in a frying pan over medium-low heat. Afterwards, we will only have to choose the filling with which we want to enjoy them, roll them and decorate them, if we wish. We may want to simplify the presentation a little more, in that case we can sprinkle them with powdered sugar or cocoa powder, and accompany them with fresh fruit, for example.

Recipes that share origin.

Despite having left in the blog several recipes made with crepes, until now I had never talked about their origin. I suppose that since I did not elaborate a traditional recipe of crepes, but they were always modified elaborations, or combined to make another recipe, I had never thought of telling you about it.

In different cultures, we can find different types of pancakes, crepes or liquid batters cooked on hot surfaces, among the traditional elaborations of their gastronomy. For example, dosas in Indian culture, Dutch poffertjes, Russian blini, Japanese hirayachi, Chinese jianbing or the famous French crêpes, among many others.

The etymology of most Western pancakes, both thick and thin, comes from one of the two main conduits. The Greek tiganos, meaning “frying pan“, finds its way into several languages with similar elaborations that literally translate as “pan cakes“. Following this example, we find the American pancakes, the Norwegian pannekake, the Argentinean pancakes and the South African pannekoek.

Its name comes from the Old French “crespe“, which goes back to the Latin “crispa” or “crispus“, meaning curly. It is quite possible that this term refers to their edges, which after cooking have a slightly wavy appearance.

As fine crepes we can find French crêpes, along with Mexican crepes and Turkish krep.

Crepes origin.

In French folklore it is said that crepes were born from a small mistake or mishap in Brittany. A 13th century housewife accidentally spilled some buckwheat porridge from a teapot in the fireplace onto a flat cooking stone, although other sources place the origin of crêpes much earlier in chronology.

Crêpes Day, February 2, is believed to have begun in 472, when Pope Gelasius I offered crêpes to French Catholic pilgrims visiting Rome for Candlemas. Now, Crêpes Day and Candlemas are synonymous occasions in France and Belgium, where they take on additional significance, as their circular nature symbolizes a coin or the sun.

Brittany could claim the origin of crêpes with some credibility since savory crêpes are still traditionally made with buckwheat flour. This crop works well in the humid climate of Brittany where, by contrast, normal wheat does not.

Traditionally, French crepes are made with flour, eggs and milk or water, with butter, sugar and salt. In this case, we do not use leavening agents, baking powder, since our purpose is to achieve a thin crepe and not spongy, like pancakes. In some recipes, butter can be replaced by beurre noisette, so that a formidable flavor and aroma is achieved. Then we only need to beat, strain and let it rest.

Crêpes became very popular in the United States in 2001 thanks to Emy Wada, a Japanese pastry chef who had studied in France. She created a mille crêpe cake at her New York bakery, Lady M Boutique. Mille crêpe literally translates as “a thousand crêpes”, although the cake contains a maximum of 20 crêpes alternating with a pastry cream filling.