The sweet half of the Nantes crêperie order: a soft wheat crêpe folded around a dark salted-butter caramel, the western French answer to the question of what to do with salted butter and sugar.

Where the savoury galette is buckwheat, the sweet crêpe is wheat flour, milk, eggs and sugar, and in a Nantes crêperie the two arrive in that order with cidre poured through both. The salted-butter caramel that fills it is a product of the region's dairy and its salt: the Guérande marshes down the coast supplied salt up the Loire for centuries, and demi-sel butter is the western French default rather than an affectation. Cooking sugar to a dark caramel and then killing it with cold salted butter and cream gives a sauce that is bitter, salty and sweet at once, and it is now the standard sweet order in crêperies across the region.

Where to eat Crêpe au caramel au beurre salé in Nantes

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Make it at home

Serves 41 hr 30 minEasy

Ingredients

  • For the crêpes: 250g plain flour
  • 3 eggs
  • 500ml whole milk
  • 30g caster sugar
  • Pinch of salt
  • 30g melted butter, plus more for the pan
  • For the caramel: 200g caster sugar
  • 80g salted butter, cold and cubed (demi-sel if you have it)
  • 150ml double cream, warmed
  • A good pinch of fleur de sel

Method

  1. Whisk the flour, sugar and salt together, make a well, and beat in the eggs. Add the milk a little at a time, whisking to keep it smooth, then the melted butter. Rest the batter for at least an hour.
  2. For the caramel, tip the sugar into a dry heavy pan over a medium heat. Leave it alone until it starts to melt at the edges, then swirl the pan, never stir, until it is an even dark amber. Take it just past golden: the bitterness is the point.
  3. Off the heat, drop in the cold salted butter and whisk. It will hiss and foam. When it is smooth, pour in the warm cream in a slow stream and whisk again. Return to a low heat for a minute if any sugar has seized, then add the fleur de sel and set aside to thicken.
  4. Cook the crêpes in a buttered pan over a medium-high heat, a small ladle at a time, about 45 seconds a side, until pale gold and lacy at the edges.
  5. Spread a spoonful of the warm caramel over each crêpe, fold into quarters, and finish with another spoonful and a few flakes of salt.

Editor tip. Warm the cream before it goes into the caramel. Cold cream hitting hot sugar seizes it into a solid lump that you then have to melt back down over a low heat.

Common allergens: Gluten, Eggs, Dairy.