Brown Butter Crepes with Bananas, Nutella and Speculoos (2024)

Several of my friends have secret family pancake recipes, along with fond memories of making and eating animal shaped pancakes with their parents. But growing up, my family was never very big on breakfast. My dad and mom fueled themselves on coffee and tea, and my sister was constantly on some kind of diet. I always zipped out the door without grabbing anything to eat. If I was good, I’d have a bottle of SunnyD (gross, right?) and a banana. But that was it. Back then, it had been years since I’d eaten pancakes, and the closest thing I’d come to waffles were some of those Eggo ones that you popped in the toaster and tasted like cardboard.

It was only in college that I started to really needbreakfast. After a heavy night of drinking, a plate of greasy eggs and bacon from the school cafeteria seemed like a godsend. And then, of course, in the mid-aughts, came the brunch revolution. Overnight, it seemed like a ton of cute mom-and-pop type restaurants had popped out of the woodwork, attracting long lines for breakfast food served at midday. My friend Leah, always up on the latest trends, would drag me out of bed at 10AM (early for a college kid) for brunch at the latest hip spot. I was unimpressed; this usually meant standing outside in the cold and rain as we waited for the same kind of eggs and bacon that we had in the school cafeteria. In an attempt to make these brunch trips worthwhile, I started ordering sweet brunch dishes that you couldn’t get from the school cafeteria — stuff like freshly made waffles, pancakes, and French toast. Pretty soon, I was the one dragging Leah around in search of the best breakfast sweets around town.

My favorite sweet breakfast dish, however, have always been thin and crispy French crepes. I adored the way you could fold them up into triangles and the crazy amount of fillings available — lemon and sugar, Nutella and banana, strawberries and cream — almost any combination you could imagine! These crepes, for instance, go all out and are filled with bananas, Nutella, and Speculoos cookie spread:

I’m sure at this point, there’s no need to introduce anybody to Nutella, the European chocolate-hazelnut spread that has taken the US by the storm. But have you guys heard of Speculoos cookie butter? Speculoos cookies are a kind of thin, flat European shortbread cookie, spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, cardamom and white pepper. As a kid living in the Netherlands, these cookies would usually appear some time around Christmas (specifically for Sinterklaas).

Speculoos cookie butter takes these cookies and turns them into a spread akin to peanut butter and Nutella. Some people have likened it to peanut butter, but they’re wrong — because sure, it’s like peanut butter, if peanut butter were on some kind of crack to make it even more delicious, glamorous, and sexy. Speculoos cookie butter tastes like a combination of caramel and gingerbread. It’s got the texture of peanut butter, but with crunchy cookie crumbles that give it a little something extra. Big shout out to my friend Tracy for twisting my arm and making me try a jar of Speculoos!

Some baker’s notes:

• • Speculoos cookie butter is available online, or at your local Trader Joe’s. Nutella is available in almost every major supermarket, usually near or in the peanut butter section.

• • Did you know that you don’t need a crepe pan or a crepe spreader to make crepes? I know that a crepe spreader will make your crepes thinner and crispier, but the crepes that I had in France were actually a little bit spongy. These crepes are more like that — thin and slightly spongy in the middle, crisp and crunchy on the outsides. All you need to make them is a nonstick pan with a handle.

• Although crepes are widely regarded as a breakfast food, did you know that you can also make cakes out of them? Check out this chocolate hazelnut crepe cake or this other coconut cream crepe cake beauty. Both recipes use this crepe recipe as its base because this crepe recipe is extremely forgiving. Once you get the hang of it, you can make perfectly circular crepes almost every time. I promise.

posted by Michelle Lopez on April 2, 2014 (last updated Dec 31, 2023)

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