Blinchiki: Blintzes with Sweet Cheese Filling

Lots of work; total­ly worth it.

  • The CRÊPES!
  • 1 cup (5 oz.) unbleached all-pur­pose flour
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 6 tbsp. water
  • 2  large eggs
  • 3  tbsp. unsalt­ed but­ter, melt­ed, plus more for cook­ing the crêpes
  • 2 tbsp. gran­u­lat­ed sugar
  • 1 tsp. vanil­la extract
  • 1⁄4 tsp. salt
  • The FILLING!
  • 12 oz. farm­ers cheese (about 2 cups) 
    • OPTION: Ricot­ta cheese if you can’t get farmer’s cheese
  • 1⁄4 cup heavy cream
  • 3 tbsp. gran­u­lat­ed sugar
  • 2 tbsp. unsalt­ed but­ter, melt­ed and cooled
  • 1 tsp. vanil­la extract
  • The CHERRY SAUCE!
  • 1⁄4 cup (1 3⁄4 ounces) gran­u­lat­ed sugar
  • 21⁄2 tsp. cornstarch
  • Pinch salt
  • 1 (24-oz.) jar Morel­lo cher­ries, drained (about 2 cups cher­ries), with 1⁄2 cup juice reserved
  • 1⁄4 cup dry red wine
  • 1 cin­na­mon stick
  • 1⁄8 tea­spoon almond extract
  • 2 tbsp. unsalt­ed but­ter, for cook­ing the filled blintzes
  • Con­fec­tion­ers’ sug­ar, for dusting
  • TOOLS
  • Food proces­sor or blender

Directions

Crepes: Blend all of the ingre­di­ents togeth­er in a blender (or food proces­sor) until smooth, about 4 sec­onds. Trans­fer the bat­ter to a cov­ered con­tain­er and refrig­er­ate for at least 2 hours, or up to 2 days.

Fill­ing: While the bat­ter is rest­ing, mix all of the fill­ing ingre­di­ents togeth­er in a bowl. Cov­er and refrig­er­ate until needed.

Sauce: Stir the gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar, corn­starch, and salt togeth­er in a medi­um saucepan. Whisk in the reserved cher­ry juice and wine. Add the cin­na­mon stick and cook over medi­um-high heat, whisk­ing fre­quent­ly, until the mix­ture sim­mers and thick­ens, 3 to 5 min­utes. Dis­card the cin­na­mon stick. Stir in the cher­ries and a drop of almond extract and return to a brief sim­mer; cov­er to keep warm and set aside.

Blintzes Assemble!

Using a pas­try brush, brush the bot­tom and sides of a 6- to 8- inch non­stick skil­let (or crêpe pan) very light­ly with melt­ed but­ter. Gen­tly stir the bat­ter to recom­bine. When the but­ter stops siz­zling, remove the pan from the heat, tilt the pan slight­ly and pour 2 1⁄2 tbsp. of the bat­ter (you can fill a 1⁄4 cup mea­sur­ing cup a lit­tle past the halfway mark) into the pan. As you pour the bat­ter, rotate the pan to swirl the bat­ter even­ly over the face of the pan before return­ing it to the heat.

Cook the crêpe until the first side is spot­ty gold­en brown, 30 to 60 sec­onds. Use a thin spat­u­la to flip the crêpe and con­tin­ue to cook until the sec­ond side is just set, but not brown, about 15 sec­onds longer. Trans­fer the crêpe to a parch­ment paper–lined plate and let cool (you can stack the crêpes on top of each oth­er). Repeat with the remain­ing bat­ter, brush­ing the pan with but­ter as needed.

Work­ing with 1 crêpe at a time, spoon a gen­er­ous table­spoon of the cheese fill­ing over the browned side and fold fol­low­ing the illus­tra­tions below. Repeat with the remain­ing crêpes and filling.

To fin­ish: Melt 1 tbsp. of the but­ter in a 12-inch non­stick skil­let over medi­um heat. Add half of the blintzes and cook until the first side is gold­en brown, about 1 minute. Gen­tly ip the blintzes over and con­tin­ue to cook until the sec­ond side is gold­en brown, about 1 minute longer. Trans­fer the browned blintzes to a plat­ter and cov­er with foil to keep warm. Repeat with the remain­ing 1 table­spoon but­ter and unbrowned blintzes.

Reheat the cher­ry sauce over medi­um heat if nec­es­sary. Dust the warm blintzes with con­fec­tion­ers’ sug­ar, spoon some of the cher­ry sauce over the top, and serve, pass­ing the remain­ing sauce separately.