Crepes & Failed Ginger Beer

I don't care what your personal tastes are, crêpes beat pancakes any day. The shear versatility of crêpes as opposed to pancakes is one thing. But the texture is what really sets these two apart. Crêpes are smooth and buttery. Pancakes are puffy and soak up way too much syrup. Anyways, here's a recipe for traditional crêpes suzette.

1 cup all-purpose flour

4 tbsp sugar

Pinch of salt

2 beaten eggs

1 1/2 cups milk

2 tbsp melted butter

2 tbsp cognac or brandy (optional)

As you would with any pastry, mix wet and dry ingredients together seperately and then mix together. The crêpes mixture should be very liquid and lump-less. Simply pour enough of mixture into a frying pan so that the bottom is covered. The crêpe should not be thin enough to hold together and not thick enough to mistaken for a steak. Enjoy with maple syrup, fruit, brown sugar, caramel, or whatever you feel like. Plus, crepes can also be used in non-desert meals.

In other news, I took a stab at homemade ginger beer. I love the spicyness of ginger beer, how refreshing it is, and I also like the fact that ginger is excellent for the stomach. However, making my own ginger beer didn't achieve the results I'd wanted. It tasted funky to say the least. The recipe - which I got online - called for a 2 litre bottle of water, 2 tbsp grated ginger with juice, juice of 1 lemon, 1 cup sugar, and 1/4 tsp dried yeast. You let stand in a warm area for a day or so and the yeast produces CO2. That much was achieved. But the taste was just gross. Anyways, the only good thing about this is that it gave me a chance to talk about peeling ginger, something I learned on Food Network. Simply use the tip of a small spoon and scrape. This allows you to get around every bump which causes less waste. This technique, however, did not make for a better ginger beer. Maybe some things are just better when they're bought...