Video Attempt: Crêpes Suzette

Hi, friends! Inspired once again by Julia and Jacques, Matt and I made another video of our own. This time, instead of pizza with burnt walnuts, we take you on the epic journey of making our own crêpes and intentionally lighting them on fire. As a bonus, I also let you in on one of Matt's famous URL purchases. (You probably didn't know this, but he is the proud owner of a few very strange URLs.) As always, I hope you enjoy!

Crêpes Suzette (adapted from Food and Wine)
Crêpes
2 large eggs
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup milk
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/3 cup cold water
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 tablespoon melted unsalted butter, plus more butter for the skillet

Orange Butter
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for buttering
about 1/4 cup of sugar cubes, plus more for sprinkling
1 orange
1/3 cup fresh orange juice (from the aforementioned orange)
1/4 cup Grand Marnier
2 tablespoons Cognac
Long-handle matches

Directions
In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, flour, milk, salt and sugar until smooth; the batter will be thick. Whisk in the water, oil and melted butter.

Heat a 6-inch crêpe pan (I used a 9-inch.) or nonstick skillet and rub with a little butter. Add 2 tablespoons of the batter and tilt the skillet to distribute the batter evenly, pouring any excess batter back into the bowl. Cook over moderately high heat until the edges of the crêpe curl up and start to brown -- about 45 seconds. Flip the crêpe(!) and cook for 10 seconds longer, until a few brown spots appear on the bottom. Tap the crêpe out onto a plate. Repeat with the remaining batter to make 12 crêpes, buttering the skillet a few times as necessary.

[Here's where I went off course from the Food & Wine version, and while my crêpes turned out absolutely great, for the much-tested F&W recipe, go here.]

Take 3 to 5 sugar cubes and rub them against the skin of the orange until the cubes are nice and orange-colored/flavored. Then, juice the orange until you get 1/3 cup of the good stuff/juice. Set this aside. Now, melt 6 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet. Once it's melted, you can take it off heat or turn it down really low while you dip the crêpes individually into the butter. Take one crêpe and dunk half of the one side in the butter and then the other half of the opposite side. Next, fold it in half in the pan and then fold it in half again so that you are left with this little quarter circle in the pan. (If these directions don't make sense, I encourage you to watch the folding demonstration on either my video or the Julia and Jacques video.) Do this to all of your crêpes. Once they're all in there, turn the heat to medium-low and add all of the sugar cubes--the orange ones and the non-orange ones alike. Add your orange juice too, and wait until the sugar starts to caramelize in the pan. Once the sugar has completely caramelized, you are ready to add the alcohol and light this SOB on fire!

Safety tip: Never pour the alcohol into the pan straight from the bottle. (Even though if you watch the J&J video, Jacques totally wants to pour the alcohol straight from the bottle, but Julia won't let him.)

OK, so from your measuring cup, pour the alcohol on top of your pan full of crêpes. Calmly and with great confidence, light your long-handled match and set the liquid on fire. If possible (This wasn't really possible for me.), take a spoon, and spoon the liquid on top of the crepes so as to baste them. The good news is that the alcohol will eventually burn off, so if you can't get in there, just be patient and soon enough, your lovely crêpes will stop burning. Once this has happened, turn off heat, congratulate yourself, and enjoy a lovely, homemade crêpe suzette!