Buttered Crepes with Caramel and Pecans (Crepas con Cajeta)

Cajeta has entered my life as a result of this project, and that is a very, very good thing. I used to think that boiling a can of condensed milk was all I needed to make a nice dulce de leche. I have changed my mind -- cajeta is vastly superior (with all due respect to April Bloomfield, who apparently has access to better "tins" of condensed milk than I do). I, frankly, am not the world's biggest fan of goat cheese, but I love the same goat-y notes in my caramel, and how. Anyway, we now keep some cajeta on hand almost all of the time, and I was looking forward to making this. I admit I would generally much rather have a glass of Port for my dessert than a crepe, and I had never made crepes before, but this was an amazing dessert. In fact, I could have a glass of Port along with it; or maybe a glass of Sauternes. Here's the mise:

Clockwise from the top left: 2/3 cup of flour, 1/2 inch cinnamon stick, 3 cloves, 1 cup of milk (cow, not goat), some melted butter, 2 eggs, sugar, and salt. By the way, there is so much great sugar out there now other than the pedestrian granulated kind -- even from the big producers who have famous signs in various harbors -- that I don't know why people even used to eat boring old sugar.

Enough with the food rant. First, I made the batter for the crepes. Let me just say that, for those who may have been underwhelmed with crepes in the past, cinnamon/clove crepes are really good. I smashed up the cinnamon and cloves in a mortar and pestle and added all of the ingredients except the butter to the blender jar:

I pureed it, added the butter, and let the crepe batter rest for 2 hours. Meanwhile, I started on the topping. The mise for that was pecans, cajeta, and butter.

The first step is to toast the pecans. What's toast without butter? Well, I'm neither Ina Garten nor Alexandra Guarnaschelli, so this is a rare sight in my home:

I must admit, I seriously considered converting this recipe into Homer's Space-Age Out-of-This-World Moon Waffles, but I was resolute.

Still resolute, although I now was considering the Good Morning Burger.

Ahh, finally the pecans are toasted in the brown(ing) butter, which results in this deliciosity:

Not that I ate all of the butter; I carefully removed the nuts, leaving much of the brown butter behind:

Okay, okay, you may see the butter reappear later. Anyway, I got out our crepe pan (why do we have one of those when I have never made crepes before?) and brushed it lightly with oil:

I proceeded to make the crepes:

Once all of the crepes were made, I spooned a tablespoon of cajeta on the crepes:

I folded them in half, brushed with some of the nutty butter (not Nutter Butter), and folded in half again. Those who followed the tortilla recipe closely will note that, with these two folds, I ended up with crepes that were one-quarter circles, not one-sixth circles. I brushed them with more butter and set them in a casserole dish:

This wasn't really a decadent dessert yet, with just a few tablespoons of cajeta, a stick of butter, and crepes. More was necessary, so I took the rest of the cajeta and warmed it in a saucepan:

Meanwhile, I heated the crepes in the oven for 10 minutes:

To plate, I added the heated cajeta to a few crepes and drizzled the pecans on top, thusly. Now that's decadent:

Overall, this was very good. It is incredibly rich, but there are enough flavors that it still works. I wouldn't necessarily eat it every day, but it was quite nice. Definitely worth the effort; the only problem is that it uses up an entire recipe of cajeta. Well, that just means it's time to buy another carton of goat milk and get going...

Sources:
Eggs and butter from Central Market