If you’re looking for a good breakfast/brunch idea, you should make some blintzes. I’ve grown up eating these, and I loved them. We would buy them frozen and we just pan fried or baked them. When we were feeling fancier, we would make a blintz soufflé where you bake the frozen blintzes in a simple egg/milk custard so create almost a soufflé. That was definitely a treat. I hadn’t had them in a little while so I thought it would be fun to make them from scratch.

What exactly is a blintz? It’s essentially a stuffed crepe and these have Jewish origins. The filling is typically either fruit, cheese or sometimes potato. My favourite is the cheese blintzes. The recipe I used was from Tori Avey (link here) – who’s Hamantaschen recipe I also love and use every year at Purim time (link to see my post for that).

So when I say cheese, I don’t mean mozzarella or cheddar. The cheese here is farmer’s cheese which is a dry cottage cheese, similar to ricotta. You want something dry and with a little texture from the curds. The farmer’s cheese gets sweetened so these become almost like a dessert. This recipe has some sugar, egg and cream cheese and is nicely flavoured with lemon and vanilla. It almost tasted like a cheesecake mixture.

Next is the crepes. These were made with a simple batter that can be made fully in a blender. It was a combination of flour, eggs, sugar, milk, water, vanilla and salt. Cooking crepes does take a little finesse but after the first couple, you should have the right technique. This recipe is unique though. Since the stuffed crepes get pan fried, you only need to cook the crepe on one side (no flipping required) and then the other side will cook in the second stage – the recipe has all the details. You just need to make sure you keep the (half) cooked crepes separated or else they will stick to one another.

Making these reminded me of when I made the chocolate crepe cake for my dad’s birthday (link here). I don’t make crepes very often, but it is such a fun time when I do. Note: If you didn’t want to make blintzes, you could just make the crepes and serve them with fruit and yogurt. But I wanted to go the full mile and stuff them to make blintzes.

With the filling prepared and the crepes cooked, it was time to assemble. I may have slightly overstuffed my blintzes, they were quite large after rolling. They all closed up well though and pan frying only took a few minutes on each side to get them golden brown and beautiful.

I served mine with a little greek yogurt and fresh mango. These were everything I hoped they would be (and more). The filling was super creamy and gooey, as well as not overly sweet. Also the crepe was perfectly tender with a little chewiness. So yummy. Can’t wait to make these again!