French · Desserts

Crêpes Suzette

Paper-thin crêpes folded into an orange-caramel butter sauce and flambéed at the table with Grand Marnier. A piece of theatre invented by accident in Monte Carlo, and still the best trick in the dessert repertoire.

45 min prep and cooking plus 1 hr resting 1 hr 45 min start to finish Serves 4 servings Medium
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Crêpes Suzette

Photograph credit: Crépe Suzette 001 by Ocdp · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

What Goes With It

  • A glass of the same Grand Marnier
  • Vanilla ice cream, if you want the contrast
  • Strong black coffee

How to Cook Crêpes Suzette

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  1. Whisk the flour, sugar and salt, make a well, and beat in the eggs and a third of the milk to a smooth thick paste. Whisk in the rest of the milk and the melted butter. Rest, covered, for 1 hour.

  2. Heat a 20 cm pan over medium heat and wipe with butter. Ladle in just enough batter to coat the base thinly, swirling immediately.

  3. Cook 45 seconds until the edges lift and the underside is lacily browned, flip, and cook 20 seconds more. Repeat to make about 12 crêpes, stacking them as you go.

  4. For the sauce, melt the sugar in a wide frying pan over medium heat without stirring until it is a light amber caramel, about 5 minutes.

  5. Add the orange zest and juice — the caramel will seize, then dissolve — and simmer 3 minutes until slightly syrupy.

  6. Lower the heat and whisk in the cold butter a few cubes at a time until the sauce is glossy and emulsified. Stir in the Grand Marnier.

  7. Fold each crêpe into quarters and slide them into the sauce, spooning it over, until all are coated and hot.

  8. Warm the brandy, pour it over, and light it carefully with a long match. Let the flames die completely before serving.

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Notes From the Method

The first crêpe is always a write-off. It is calibrating the pan temperature, not failing.

Stand well back when you flambé, tie back long hair, and never pour spirit from the bottle straight into a lit pan.

Crêpes can be made a day ahead and stacked between baking paper — only the sauce needs to be last-minute.

Keeping What's Left

Plain crêpes keep 2 days refrigerated or 2 months frozen, interleaved with paper. Assemble and sauce them only when serving.

Questions and Answers

How long does Crêpes Suzette take to make?

25 minutes of preparation and 20 minutes of cooking, plus 1 hour of resting, so allow 1 hour 45 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 4.

Nutrition per Serving

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

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Compiled by Turab

Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.

First published ; last changed .