Russina Blini

My mom makes the world’s best blini (crepes). She can make crepes with butter, apples or meat. When my mom came to visit us this summer, she made lots of crepes with meat so that I could freeze it. My husband thinks that my mom’s blini are better than mine…perhaps it is because she spent years making them.

The first time I tried to make blini in high school, I ended up calling my mom at 12 am (her time) asking her why my blini are not coming out right. Of course she couldn’t tell me what I was doing wrong, because an ocean was between us. But I dumped everything out of my bowl and tried to make another batch. As Russian saying goes, “Pervui blin komam”. This literally means that the first crepe won’t come out right, meaning that the first time you try to do something, you won’t be good at if you don’t keep on practicing.

I had plenty of practice in college making blini, when I found out that my friend Lindsay loves crepes just as much as I do. So we would get together and make crepes. Now that I am married, when I want to get rid of milk that may be expiring in a day or two, I make crepes.

1 egg
1 tbs sugar
1 ts salt
1.5 drinking glass of milk**
1 drinking glass of flour *

*My mom brings Russian flour with her, when she comes to visit us. She doesn’t like the fact that American flour does not dissolve good. I have tried to make crepes with organic flour and found that it works just as good as Russian flour.

** Growing up in Belarus we didn’t have measuring cups. So when my mom cooks, she uses a drinking glass. The trick in this recipe is to use the same drinking glass to measure milk and flour.

In a mixing bowl add egg, sugar and salt. Mix everything very well.


Add milk to the mixture and once again whisk everything together.

Slowly add flour constantly whisking. Make sure that you whisk until flour is dissolved.

Make sure that your frying pan is hot. Gently coat the sides of the pan with butter and add ½ cup (our measuring cups) of crepe mixture in a frying pan. Do the same things as you would do with pancakes, make sure that mixture is spread evenly on the pan creating a very thin looking pancake.



When one side is cooked, which you should see brown dots on the bottom of the crepe, it is time to flip the crepe.

Once the crepe is cooked, I usually like to eat it hot with butter. I also like to dip my crepes in jelly for dessert like dish. You can be creative and add fruit or whatever your heart desires.




When I want a more filling meal, I fill the crepes with ground turkey mixture (you can add onion and boiled egg to the mixture). I then roll it up and when I am ready to eat I warm it up in a hot frying pan. It is best warmed up in a frying pan with butter. Cook a crepe until both sides are brown and crispy.