Blintzes!

One of my favorite foods that I love to eat around Shavuot are Blintzes. My husband knows this recipe by another name, Palačinke. You may know it by another name, depending on your cultural background.

Note: This is not a GAPS or PALEO, but GLUTEN FREE recipe. Many Jewish holidays do not lend well to the GAPS Diet, and as our journey has started out, we're trying to work around these issues. Until we've worked them all out, I will continue sharing safe, gluten free recipes.

  The version that I enjoy involves four steps. First, you make the crepes. Secondly you make the filling and wrap it firmly inside the crepes. The third step involves baking.  The Fourth step - patience and a cold refrigerator.

The recipe really isn't complicated. We use the Schär Mix C for our flour mix, but I believe if you follow the directions, most any gluten free flour mix will lend to this. I would advise however, if you get this recipe in mind, remember that it will take several hours until pay-off, so you might want to make this in the evening if you plan on having it for breakfast, unless you plan on doing the pan-fry version. Those are pretty much immediate pay off.

The key here though, is to make your crepes and blintzes on the same day, or they'll make a huge fall-apart mess like mine did tonight. Normally, crepes are more forgiving than mine were. But, I let mine go a day and a half between making my blintzes. (whoops!)

See? They fell all apart.
That's ok though, my kids really will not care come morning,
and we'll have a BEAUTIFUL breakfast for Shabbat. :)

Anyhow,  there's probably about a thousand different ways (or more!) to make blintzes.

For the crepes, you will need:

100g Flour

2 Eggs

250ml Milk (If dairy free, simply use your milk of choice. We've done it both ways!)

1 TBS Vanilla sugar or vanilla flavoring

2 TBS melted butter (or non-dairy butter substitute)

a pinch of salt

You mix this together and go ahead and heat your pan. When it is sufficiently warm, go ahead and pour a bit of the batter into your pan. This will NOT be a thick batter. These will be extra thin and only take about two minutes to cook in the pan. It takes a little trial and error with the first couple, but you'll get it!

When you're done, just keep piling the crepes onto a plate. You'll need these later.

I've used three different fillings for this recipe.

For dairy free, I've used the following formula: 250g soft tofu, pureed; 1 egg 3 Tbs. sugar. 

For dairy filling #1, I used the following: 250g of Quark with 1 beaten egg white, sugar (to taste), cinnamon and vanilla flavoring dusted in to taste.

For dairy filling #2, I used the following: 250g Cottage Cheese with 4 Tbs Sugar, cinnamon and vanilla to taste.

Really, with this recipe, it's whatever YOU like. Many people add fruit as well, and some people do not use sweet fillings at all.

One way I found best to measure out the cheese filling, is to use a metal ice cream scoop. I got a smaller size (1TBS) measurement so I just use 2-3 of these and then roll each crepe before frying or baking. (This is the scoop I use: WMF 1881876040 Eisportionierer 4,5 cm)

This is Dairy Filling #1 mixed with one egg.
I decided to try something new.

You'll wrap these similarly to spring rolls, and from here - either fry them in a pan, or bake in the oven. I prefer mine baked in the oven.

This is about 3 tablespoons of filling.
You can fill six blintzes with this recipe.

You can wrap this way and roll, or wrap the bottom
and then roll the sides together before rolling further.

When you have finished rolling your blintz, it will look like this.
This is the shape it will keep once baked in the oven.

If you choose the pan fry option, this blog has great directions on how to keep it from coming apart. 

If you decide on the oven baking route, you'll want to go ahead and preheat your oven to 350°F., before you make all of the wraps and butter a 9 by 13-inch glass dish or baking pan for your blintzes. 

Buttered glass dish.
An easy way to do this is to save your butter wraps.
You would be amazed how much butter remains on those.

Once you've managed to squeeze in as many blintzes as you can into the baking dish/pan, you'll want to use some melted butter (or butter substitute) to cover the tops of the blintzes. Bake these for around 15 minutes in your oven.  Once the dish/pan has cooled enough that you can touch it, you'll want to put the blintzes into your refrigerator until they are quite cool.

When you are ready to eat them, dust lightly with confectioner's sugar, or you can make a sauce to pour over the blintzes. (Example sauce here)

Happy Baking! Remember this recipe next year at Shavuot.