two recipes for blini!

they are delicious russian crepes. you usually eat them for breakfast, and you can have them with sweet or savoury toppings/fillings. these recipes are our dad's, and he got them from his sister. we believe that our dad makes the world's best blini, and the russian community in the city he lives in agrees! every year around maslenitsa, they have a blini competition, and our dad always wins because he is the blini champion.

milk-based blini (easier to make but less tender)

• 1 cup of milk. you probably want to use semi-skimmed cow's milk, because that is what our dad uses. he has not tried using vegetarian milks, but you could try!
• 3 eggs
• 2 tablespoons of white sugar
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 2 cups of plain flour
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• a ladle of vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 cups of water

the above quantities make a LOT of blini so feel free to adjust them to suit your needs!

1. whisk together the milk and eggs in a big bowl.
2. add the sugar, salt, baking powder, and flour and whisk until smooth. you do not have to add the flour all at once - in fact, doing it gradually will be easier and better.
3. add the ladle of vegetable oil and whisk until smooth.
4. gradually water down the dough with approximately 1 1/2 cups of water. you want the end result to have a very thin consistency, thinner than heavy cream.
5. heat up a frying pan until it is hot. the level of heat you want to use is medium-high.
6. pour your first blin! if your frying pan is decently sized, use 4/5 of a ladle of dough. make sure to spread it around in the frying pan by tilting the pan in a circular motion. the blin should be thin like a crepe.
7. as soon as the blin can come off the pan, flip it with a spatula.
8. count to about fifteen very slowly (1 mississippi, 2 mississippi, etc...) and remove the blin from the frying pan. place it on a big wide plate. when you remove the blin from the pan, it should not be stiff or rigid. if it's not floppy, you probably held it on the pan for too long. the good news is that you will be able to practice doing this because the recipe makes a LOT of blini.
9. keep doing this until you use up all of the dough.
10. eat some fresh hot blini with your favourite toppings/fillings! some ideas: jam, sour cream and sugar, butter and sugar and lemon juice, nutella... these are all sweet because that's how we prefer to eat them but the world is your oyster.

kefir-based blini (harder to make but very tender)

• 1 cup of plain flour
• 2 tablespoons of white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda. you can use baking powder if you don't have baking soda.
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1 cup of boiling water
• 1 cup of kefir
• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

1. in a small bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, and baking soda.
2. boil a kettle.
3. in a big bowl, mix together the eggs and salt until the resulting mixture is foamy. do this with an electric mixer. it may take a while!
4. without stopping the electric mixer, add 1 cup of boiling water, a third of a cup at a time.
5. keep the electric mixer going! add the kefir and the vegetable oil to the big bowl.
6. with the electric mixer still going, add the contents of the small bowl (flour, sugar, baking soda mixture) to the big bowl. stop the electric mixer only after you have thoroughly mixed the flour mixture into the rest of the ingredients.
7. put some vegetable oil on a paper towel and use it to oil a frying pan.
8. now follow steps 5-10 of the milk-based blini recipe!