Lady M Mille Crêpes Cake For Easter & The History Of Crêpe Cakes
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The first Easter cake we baked was a coconut-covered lamb. We purchased a special mold, baked a yellow cake, frosted it in white, and coated it with shredded coconut. Was it a masterpiece? Probably not, but our memory recalls that everyone was delighted with the effort. In recent years, however, we have forgone the effort of baking a special cake and bought one instead: a Lady M Mille Crêpes Cake. Lady M mille crêpes cake is a boon for fine cake lovers around the world. It’s our Top Pick Of The Week, for Easter or anytime you want a very special, very elegant piece of cake. What’s a mille crêpes cake? It’s a stack of paper-thin crêpes, the same crêpes you might order for brunch, topped with a filling and rolled up. In a crêpe cake, nothing is rolled: The flat crêpes are brushed with light pastry cream and stacked. To see how thin they are when you make your own, see photo #6. At Lady M, the top crêpe is caramelized crust. Then, each flavor of crêpe cake is finished in a different style, as you can see from the photos. This leads us to a disclosure: While “mille crêpes” indicates 1,000 crêpes (mille, pronounced meel, is the number one thousand in French), there are actually some 20 crêpes in each cake, each crêpe handmade in the Lady M kitchens. The latest mille crêpes cake flavor to launch at Lady M is Tres Leches (photo #1). We’ve had a sneak peek at it (and a sneak taste as well), which is why we’re ordering it for Easter. There’s currently free shipping: Buy two cakes (any flavor), and get free shipping. That’s one cake for us, and one for a gift (or two different flavors for Easter dessert). > The history of crêpe cake is below. > Make your own: a dulce de leche mille crêpes cake recipe. > A vanilla mille crêpes cake recipe. While there are seasonal flavors, the current roster of 9-inch mille crêpes includes: You can even order a three-tier wedding cake, each layer made of “mille” crêpes. The Lady M kitchens never stop experimenting with new flavors. Last year, specialty flavors included Popcorn and Blueberry Cheese. Dear Lady M: How about a savory crêpe cake? Remove the sugar from the pastry creme (or use a béchamel) and add minced basil or spinach, with finely-grated parmesan—or some other delicious concoction. We know you can do it! Crêpe cakes have long existed in French pastry as “gâteau de crêpes.” The modern mille crêpes cake was invented by a Japanese pastry chef Emy Wada. Seeking to improve her knowledge of Western pastry, Emy traveled across Europe. While in France, she fell in love with crêpes. Back in Tokyo, Emy began making crêpes. Because crêpes are very thin, they tend to dry out quickly. Emy discovered that stacking them in layers with a filling in between preserved their freshness. Yes, necessity was the mother of invention. She called her creation “mille crêpes,” a portmanteau of two classic French desserts: crêpes and mille-feuille* [source]. Emy began selling different flavored crêpe cakes at her Tokyo pastry shop, Paper Moon Cake Boutique, in the 1980s. They were a hit (which the first bite will tell you). In 1985, after more than a decade of supplying cakes to retailers around Tokyo, she opened her own store, Paper Moon Cake Boutique. In 2001, she expanded to supplying cakes to fine retailers in New York City, like Dean & Deluca and Takshiyama. In 2004 opened her first cake boutique in the U.S., on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, under the name Lady M [source 1] [source 2]. Lady M now sells crêpe cakes at locations around the world, and online. |
 [1] The newest flavor of Lady M’s mille-crêpe cakes: Tres Leches (photos #1 through # 5 © Lady M).
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________________ *A mille-feuille (pronounced meel-FOY), meaning “a thousand leaves,” is also known as a Napoleon, vanilla slice, and custard slice, is a pastry that traditionally has layers of puff pastry alternating with layers of pastry cream or custard. |
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