When I first started this blog at the beginning of 2012, I was so excited to have a place to share my love of recipes and ingredients and eating. I was so excited, I even hoped that my blog might get some followers, and that some of those followers might find my blog via search engines. In order to test this hypothesis, I decided to search for my blog in google, to see where it popped up and what the little blurb looked like. But to my horror (and yours, too, if you ever searched “kelly in the kitchen” back then), I discovered that a fellow Kelly—the infamous R&B singer R. Kelly—was stealing all my search term thunder. The first, oh I don’t know, 15 pages of the google results were filled almost exclusively with links to Mr. Kelly’s song, “Sex in the Kitchen.” Since we shared the search terms “kelly in the kitchen,” we had to share the space, and as a result, my humble little recipe blog was banished to search engine oblivion. I figured no one would ever find me.

Fast-forward to today. My site traffic is up, with a handful of inbound and outbound links (all of which google rewards websites for), and things are looking up. So I decided today to search for my blog in google again, to see if anything had changed. And I am proud to say that the search landscape looks quite a bit different today! KellyintheKitchen.net is now the 3rd result returned from a search of those same words, behind another blog and, yes, a link to R. Kelly’s notorious song. That’s a huge win for a little blogger in the Battle of the Search Terms! I may never shake the haunting specter of R. Kelly and google results weirdness, but I’m happy to at least be on page one, above the fold, where I’ve wanted to be all along!

Anyway, chocolate crepes with yogurt and berry filling…

INGREDIENTS

1 tbsp butter
1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
scant 1/4 cup sugar
1 cup flour, sifted
1 cup frozen berries (of course, fresh would be great, too – your filling will just be chunkier)
1 cup Greek yogurt
squeeze of honey
water
cooking spray or butter
lemon juice

Just the Recipe link: Chocolate Crepes with Berry Yogurt Filling

DIRECTIONS

Put the butter, chocolate, and milk in a pot over medium low heat and bring to a simmer, stirring to start the chocolate melting. Remove from heat and continue to stir until everything is dissolved.

Crack the eggs into a bowl with the sugar and vanilla and whisk together. Then switch to a big spoon and stir in the flour. You’ll get an annoyingly-sticky paste that is hard to stir. Pour in the milk mixture and stir to combine. Let this batter sit for 30 minutes.

To make the berry filling, put the frozen berries in a bowl with warm water to thaw out. I usually change the water once, just to move the thawing along a little faster.

Then drain the berries and mix with the yogurt and honey. Set aside.

After 30 minutes have passed, pour the crepe batter through a mesh strainer to get some of the lumps out. This step isn’t absolutely necessary, but I find that no matter how careful I am about lumps, I always have some in my crepe batter, so I like to strain it.

At this point, check your batter for consistency. We’re going for a pretty watery consistency, almost like whole milk. So add water, one tablespoon at a time, until your batter is the right consistency.

To cook, butter or spray a pan with cooking spray and heat over medium. Using a ladle or measuring cup, pour in a small amount of batter into the center of the pan and immediately swirl around to the edges of the pan. The first crepe is notoriously a failure, so don’t feel bad if your first one looks like this:

The French say to give the reject first crepe to the dog. Since these have chocolate in them, I figured Penny’s little tummy wouldn’t appreciate it, so I ate the ugly one, because my tummy does appreciate it. Regardless, the next few should work out better.

Once all the crepes are cooked, fill them. The two usual ways are to dollop the filling down the center of the crepe (the diameter, if we want to get geometric), and fold each side over to the center, like this:

Or to spread the filling over one quadrant of the crepe (can breakfast foods have quadrants?), fold it in half, and spread over the crepe layer that sits on top of the filled quadrant and fold again (that sounds confusing….just look at my picture):

To finish, drizzle with a squeeze of lemon. Dust with powdered sugar if you like – we were too hungry and ate them up before I could go rustling through the baking cabinet.