Healthy Crepe Recipes

Many people enjoy the taste of crepes - either with their breakfast meals or as a succulent desert after a full course dinner. The problem with crepes however is that often they are also very high in fat and calories, leaving more than a small dent in your diet. Even though they are generally quite 'light', if made with lots of butter, sugar or flour, they will be far from healthy.

Luckily, as long as you are willing to make a few substitutions in your recipes to lighten them up, it is perfectly possible to include a lower fat crepe with your meal plan. Below are some great recipes you might want to try out.

Buckwheat Crepe

This is a great recipe to use when preparing a crepe that is to be filled with non-sweet foods such as salmon and cream cheese or turkey and pepper. Canned tuna is also a great option to fill it with along with a small amount of low fat mayo. Each crepe will provide about 83 calories and 2 grams of fat.

2 cups water

3 tbsp canola oil

¾ cup all purpose flour

½ cup buckwheat flour

½ tsp salt

First combine the water and 2 tsp oil in a bowl. Then whisk in the flours along with the salt. Once that's done, preheat a pan to medium-high heat, so that if you drop a water droplet on the pan it will bounce off the surface. If the pan is too hot, the water will just evaporate off so you know to turn down the heat.

Next add about 3-4 tablespoons of the batter for each crepe into the pan, tilting until the bottom is evenly coated. Cook this for 1-2 minutes per side or until the bottom starts to bubble. Next run a thin knife or spatula under the edge of the crepe to lift off and then flip over. Cook for thirty seconds longer until the bottom is speckled with golden dots.

Sweet Batter

This is a great crepe for filling with items such as berries, yogurt, cottage cheese sprinkled with sweetener or bananas caramelized with brown sugar.

1 cup nonfat milk

1/3 cup water

4 large egg whites

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup all purpose flour

2 tbsp Splenda

1 tbsp canola

First, in a large bowl whisk together the milk, water, egg whites and vanilla. Next add in the flour and Splenda. Following the same instructions for the buckwheat pancakes, cook in a similar manner. Each crepe will have 95 calories and less than one gram of fat.

When making these crepes, it is very important to pay attention to the total volume of batter you are using. One of the biggest mistakes individuals make is pouring too much batter in the pan. When they do so the crepe will turn into a more pancake like product, which is obviously not ideally what you want.