Try googling “vegan Mille Crêpes.” Nothing right? How come vegans can’t partake in a mile high stack of crêpes and pastry cream? Just another vegan related injustice… Until now.
This French tower is made from 20 crêpes layers, a walnut crème and a pudding-like pastry cream. It’s labor intensive, but come on, when was the last time you had a cake made out of pancakes?
My first attempt, to be perfectly honest, was not awesome. My crêpes turned out too thick which when cooled turned rubbery and that just threw everything off. So if I can give you any advice, it’s get those babies as thin as possible. The second piece of advice is that if it looks like your tower is about to fall over, it will. To prevent that, create a stabilization structure (stick five chopsticks straight thorough your cake, make paper flags for the tops of the chopsticks and call it “festive”).
Ingredients
serves 10
Crêpe Base
Two batches of the crêpes from my Caramelized Banana Crêpe recipe.
Pastry Cream
3 cups almond milk
½ cup granulated sugar
1 pinch salt
5 tablespoons corn starch
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 teaspoons lemon juice
Walnut Filling
2 cups walnuts
½ cup almond milk
¼ cup brown rice syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Method
Make the pastry cream first. In a saucepan, warm the milk, sugar and salt over medium heat. When warm, whisk in the corn starch one tablespoon at a time, while stirring constantly. Bring the mixture to a soft boil and whisk constantly for five minutes. Take off the heat and stir in extracts and lemon juice. Let cool and transfer to the refrigerator to chill for two hours.
Next make the walnut filling. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Roast walnuts on a baking sheet for ten minutes. In a food processor, combine roasted walnuts, milk, rice syrup and vanilla until you get a smooth paste. Set aside.
Make the crêpes. Follow the directions in the linked recipe and set crêpes aside until you’re ready to assemble.
To assemble, stack crêpes alternating between slathering about three heaped tablespoons of the pastry cream on one layer and about three heaped tablespoons of the walnut crème on the next layer. Keep going until you top the stack with the last crêpe. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and get out the shovels – er, I mean spoons.
Image © Yvonne Penzakov for BitchBuzz.com