Homemade crêpes with chocolate spread and fresh strawberries!



While I haven't had a lot of unusual cravings during my pregnancy, there have been a few food items which I've just felt I needed to have. I can tell these are pregnancy cravings because of either the frequency with which I crave the food in question (such as potatoes), or by how much I dislike the food when I'm not pregnant (like fresh tomatoes, or, in this case, pancakes).

I grew up with a disdain for pancakes. I don't know how it developed. When Lola used to babysit my sister and I, she made hotcakes for us fairly frequently. These were usually topped with butter or margarine and a sprinkling of granulated sugar. Mostly, I appreciated them as a butter-sugar delivery system than as a standalone food item.

As years passed, mom got into the habit of making pancakes for breakfast on weekends. I never really did develop a taste for them during this phase. While the rest of my family happily gobbled them up with butter and syrup, I'd often end up making myself an egg sandwich or — on rare occasions — would spread jam and butter on a pancake or two if I wasn't feeling up to cooking something I knew I'd prefer.

So it was a surprise to me that I started really wanting pancakes a few months ago. I tried to quell the craving by making a batch of popovers and a Dutch baby, but despite the fact that the ingredients are almost identical to those in pancakes, I found I wasn't satisfied.

Still, the prospect of pouring syrup, spreading jam, or sprinkling sugar on a batch of pancakes simply wasn't appealing to me. I was craving pancakes, and wanted nothing to do with their standard toppings.

During my latest foray to Ambrosia, I found just the thing to inspire me. One of my many allergies and food sensitivities is to hazelnuts. This doesn't usually cause me any difficulty — there are a lot of nuts I can eat — but then there are hazelnut-based foods which it's near-impossible to find a substitute for, like Nutella. Again, this isn't usually an issue for me, but it means that foods — like crêpes — which didn't really have a presence in Toronto until after my allergy developed are foods which I've never had the pleasure of even trying. So I was downright ecstatic to discover a vegan chocolate spread (Rapunzel's Choco chocolate spread, which doesn't contain hazelnuts)!

Of course, this meant that I could make myself a batch of crêpes with a chocolate spread and fresh strawberries. I love that this means I've "killed two birds with one stone": my craving for pancakes has finally been sated, and I also got to try one of the classic crêpe-variations. My verdict: there's a reason this is a classic crêpe-variation. I'm glad I got the chance to try it.