As beautiful as they are tasty, these vegan red velvet crepes will add a whole new dimension of glamour to your dinner table, and they work for just about any meal.
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 15 minutes
Makes 8 crepes
Ingredients
100g plain flour (gluten-free can be used)
20g cassava flour
½ tbsp sugar
¼ tbsp cacao powder (not cocoa powder)
1 tsp beetroot powder
215ml unsweetened almond milk (or any other plant-based milk)
½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tbsp lemon juice (or apple cider vinegar)
Method
- Mix all the ingredients in a bowl, starting with the dry and adding the wet gently, to create a thin batter. If you are worried about lumps, using a blender could be an option, but a decent whisk and a large bowl should be more than enough. Don’t panic if your batter seems very thin, it is supposed to be liquidy. Remember: these are crepes, not pancakes.
- Heat a non-stick pan over low-medium heat. If you are concerned about your crepes sticking, you can use a piece of kitchen roll dabbed in a little neutral oil to wipe over the pan surface between batter pours.
- Pour just under ½ cup of the mixture into the middle of the pan and be prepared to work quite quickly. You need to spread the mixture around by circulating the pan until you have an even and thin crepe. After about 90 seconds to 2 minutes, the top will bubble or become slightly raised. This is your sign that it is cooked and ready to go.
- Transfer to a plate immediately and stack your remaining crepes on top of one another. Wait until cooled before adding toppings, or they will be affected by the heat of the stack.
Crepes. The ultimate in sophisticated pancake alternatives, they just have a natural ability to make any meal feel a whole lot fancier, and when you add in the red velvet element, they are out of this world. Delicately flavoured and not too sweet, these vegan red velvet crepes are the ideal base for all manner of topping or a little creative flair.
Check out Olivia’s recipe for fluffy vegan beetroot pancakes.
We’d start simple with the toppings. A little ice cream here, some vegan cream cheese there. Mauve a sprinkle of nuts or some whipped cream. But then we’d start getting ambitious. If you haven’t heard of the viral sensation that is the crepe cake yet, you need to check it out. Basically, it’s a huge stack of perfectly thin crepes, cut to resemble a circular cake and with whipped cream between each layer. The result is a tall, decadent dessert that has to be posted to social media channels as a matter of course.
Other than using your crepes as a demonstration of your cooking prowess, they give you a good excuse to hone in on the kinds of ingredients you prefer to use. For example, we use coconut sugar in this particular recipe, but you are free to swap in whatever works best for you. And almond milk isn’t essential either. You might always use soy, hazelnut or rice milk, and all should work beautifully. Also, if you enjoy the taste of these crepes, you could easily add a little cacao and beetroot powder to a thicker batter to make vegan red velvet pancakes.
