Old-Fashioned Deli Cheese Blintzes

These delicate vanilla crepes filled with a creamy, tangy cheese filling are a delicious treat for a special breakfast or brunch, especially served with a fruit sauce.

The crepe batter is very basic - I made it with milk but I’d like to try it once with seltzer water to see if it lightens the texture. The crepes cooked up quickly in a non-stick pan with no additional fat. They’re not quite as flavourful as my favourite Canadian Living recipe, but they are less eggy and just as easy to work with. The recipe made 20 crepes using a 6” pan.

The dry cottage cheese/farmer’s cheese filling becomes creamy with the addition of sour cream (I used reduced fat) and is slightly sweet, yet tangy.

Once all are cooked, the crepes are then filled, folded and rolled. At this point in the recipe, the directions come to an end and you’re left with rolled cheese blintzes with uncooked egg yolk in the filling! In the intro to the recipe, the author mentions that these are traditionally fried and served with sour cream but no instructions are supplied. I chose to bake them instead (covered in foil at 350Ffor 20 minutes). I think this is a huge oversight in the recipe and if I hadn’t made something like this before, I wouldn’t necessarily have known to do this.

Despite this omission, these are really very good and can easily be made in advance and refrigerated or even frozen.