Indulge for NYE 2024: Blinis with Caviar & Creme Fraiche

Not sure what to make for your New Year’s Eve party in 2023? Are you looking to impress your guests with an appetizer that has a real WOW factor? We’ve got you!

Chef Anne Apra of Anne Apra events shows you how to make elegant blinis from buckwheat flour as the base for her caviar with creme fresh appetizer.

Recipe:
2/3 cup (80 gr.) buckwheat flour
1Tablespoon gluten-free all-purpose or rice flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 cup (150 ml.) buttermilk or plant-based milk
2 egg whites or plant-based egg substitute
1/2 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon fresh cracked pepper, or to taste

🔑 KEY MOMENTS
00:00 Introduction
00:53 Dry Ingredients
2:36 Wet Ingredients
4:14 Mixing everything together
5:24 Cooking the blinis
7:32 How to top and serve!

Not sure what to make for New Year’s Eve have I got a great idea for you gorgeous glutenfree leenie pancakes that you can make in advance if you store them in a refrigerator with a little bit of plastic on top on your baking sheet or pop them in the freezer for a few

Minutes until they’re nice and firm and then pop them in a zipper bag and you can grab them for up to 2 months it’s an efficient use of time they’re not that expensive and bordered a pack a lot of wow factor my name is Chef and APPA I’m the

Executive chef and owner of my own catering company and I’m here to show you some fun tips and tricks and hacks on how to make some fancy looking appetizers for New Year’s we’re going to make a very beautiful Russian bleen pancake and we’re going to top it with

Homemade crem fresh and some chives and some caviar if we really want to have a big wow factor first things first we’re going to mix our dry ingredients I have a nice Bowl here with a sifter that is to make sure that we don’t have lumps in our batter for this glutenfree recipe

We’re going to use 2/3 cup of buckwheat flour buckwheat is a naturally gluten-free flour that has a great nutty flavor I love using it going to use this lovely sifter make sure that there’s no lumps nobody wants lumpy batter in addition to the buckwheat flour we’re going to use an allpurpose gluten-free p

Uh flour you can use rice flour if you want um your kitchen your rules there we go we’re going to add that in with a tablespoon of baking powder we’re going to add a pinch of kosher salt boom extra pinch cuz why not we want to get a little salty and my fun

Cracked black pepper I love using a pepper mil for fresh Cracked Pepper the one thing though is that it might not go through the holes of your sift see all those lumps we mixed out boom so then I’m going to add him in in after because

I don’t want the lumps or rather I don’t want the sifter to not allow this gorgeous fresh Cracked Pepper in oh that smells so good I’m using a mixture of black and red peppercorn so it’s going to have this wonderful bright nutty flavor along with the buckwheat and then

I’m using another hack a wonderful kitchen tool that you use is a whisk this is called a balloon whisk we’re going to use it later so I like to use the same kind of equipment again and again so I don’t have to make too many trips to the dishwasher and washing

Things so dry ingredients first our wet ingredients are going to be two eggs and we are going to use just the whites in this and here’s a little tip on how to get your egg whites you got to get your hands dirty people get them in there

Boom and make sure that you don’t get any eggs in there and if you do which I just did here’s a little tip and trick that my no no taught me is you use a piece of the shell and you use it just to scoop him out there he goes comes

Right out and then I’ll just put my little finger on him and make sure oh there he came again he’s an escape artist you definitely do not want eggshells in your food we’re going to use our balloon whisk again and we’re going to just beat these egg

Yolks you can see it’s starting to get frothy and the bubbles are coming up you want to make just soft peaks so you don’t have to do this too long just enough kind of ariate it bring some air into it there we go and you can see it’s already

Starting to get just some soft peaks should take just a few moments of time there we go now we’re on to incorporating some more wet ingredients I love using buttermilk it’s got this nice Tang to it you have to buy this giant container and you usually only

Need a splash for this recipe you’re going to use an entire cup so it’s a good good way to take advantage of using that buttermilk if you want to use a plant-based milk to make this vegan you are more than welcome to same thing with the eggs you can use an egg substitute

Okie doie I’m going to use a spatula and I’m going to just slowly incorporate my wet into the dry there we go look at how pretty that looks want to make sure I get all of that delicious buttermilk buttermilk is all the fat solids that are left behind in the milk in the

Process in so it’s got a lot more fat content a lot more flavor and you don’t have to use buttermilk you can also use just plain whole milk you can use a plant-based milk if you prefer um or you can just use water if you really don’t

Want to use the milk now we’re going to gently fold in those beautiful eggs because we don’t want to lose all that nice lightness that we brought in you can still see all that nice froth from it let’s get every little bit out of here and we’re just going to gently fold

Folding is when you take from the side and you pull into the middle and you’re incorporating and because we sifted you can see that there are no lumps in this beautiful batter that nice frothy bit of egg just want to make sure that’s all together to make this beautiful batter

Look at that can see the little air bubbles in it nice and light we got it over about a medium high heat and I want to make sure that my pan is going to be nice and hot here’s a test to make sure your pan is hot enough yep you can see

The bubbles sizzling and evaporating and dancing so you know it’s hot enough I have some lovely olive oil here I like to use a good quality no matter what I’m using it for if you don’t have olive oil though you can use a canola oil vegetable oil you can use ghee which is

Clarified butter ooh that’s good okay it’s sizzling we’re going to take this wonderful little tool which is a little 2 oz scoop and we’re just going to plop some right in the middle of your pan and we’re going to do about five I think for

This size of a skillet you want to not crowd your pan as with any kind of cooking because that way things have enough air around it and space Also for when you need to flip them and you can see that beautiful bucke color M gorgeous so you’re going to use your

Sense of smell to smell when they’re ready and your sense of sight when you see the bubbles just like a traditional pancake these are almost ready and we’re going to flip them I like to try and fill a pan in a clockwise order so that way I can keep track of roughly when

They need to get flipped I’m using these Nifty tools they’re at offset spatula I’m using one as a guide and one to help flip okay here we go flipping it over oh look how pretty let’s do this one next beautiful you don’t need a lot of oil on

On this so it’s it’s healthy not only is it gluten-free can be vegan if you omit the eggs and the buttermilk and substitute for plant-based but it also has this great vehicle of a neutral flavor that you can add all of your toppings on to really Jazz it up for

Your holiday party I have a sheet pan here with a baking rack on it that way I have some air so as I pop it out they’ll have a chance to cool evenly you’ll know they’re done when they can move on their own look how beautiful

That is a pretty bleen now’s the fun part where we’re going to compile our beautiful Russian caviar B but I also have some other fun toppings I went into the deli section of one of my local markets and I found this lovely product it’s smoked steel head which goes great

With caviar you can spend $500 on a container of this of say a Russian caviar this is actually trout caviar conversely you can use salmon R which is also delicious ious you can find that often times in an Asian market a little goes a long way when you’re using caviar

Make sure you use a nonreactive metal spoon such as this do not use that you can use Alabaster you can use wood in this case I’m going to use these adorable little ceramic you don’t want to use anything with metal with caviar I made my own homemade creme fresh it is

So easy I’m going to show you how to do it in another show nothing can be the flavor and texture of beautiful homemade creme fresh look at that creamy gorgeous and The Taste is great you know what’s in it I’ve also toasted some beautiful Walnut halves in a skillet just to give

Them a little brown color when you toast your nuts and seeds ahead of time it’s just going to enhance the flavor to top these off we’re going to use chives if you have chives great if you have green onion also called scallions you can use those one of my favorite equipment

Pieces is a pair of kitchen shears nice and sharp strictly for use with food I’m going to use these to snip my chives and I use them to open up product that has food in it so that way you’re not having cross contamination we do not want that

Speaking of which we want to make sure that you have anything that is of a food product in a separate container not on your cutting board this fish has been smoked so it is okay to eat and cross contaminate on something cuz it doesn’t have any cooties

We only need a few pieces so you can save the rest for breakfast I’m going to cut some small pieces of the smoked salmon to fit approximately the size of my baning which I have right here on a rack since I have also my food grade scissors I could use those instead and

Just give a little cut and a snap and you can see a little goes a long way this was not a very expensive item but it has a lot of wow factor let’s grab a couple of our bis and we’re going to do a few different options you can pick

Your prettiest ones for your party you can just set them out with the caviar and the creme fresh just like this and people can build their own that’s a lot easier in quite a time saer but if you have the time or if you want to invite a

Friend to come help you let me show you how to put them together we’re going to put a dollop of our homemade creme fresh we’re going to put one of these beautiful toasted walnuts and I might just stick a little chide in it to make it special and then on the others I’m

Going to going to put some of this beautiful trout row or trout caviar put them over here look at that yum it’s got this sweet colorful bright tanginess it’s got the bite of the sea that salinity is so gorgeous some smoked salmon pieces on this other one so be

Generous it’s a holiday let them enjoy for my sweet option I’m going to add a little bit of orange zest just to bright it up and add a little bit of color and interest this is called a zester and it makes these beautiful long tendrils of Bright Beautiful freshness and it little

Goes a long way maybe I’ll throw some on top of that guy too your kitchen your rules have fun with it and then for my chives I’m just going to grab a little handful and I’m going to cut them on an angle and I’m just going to pinch a few

Uh from my scissor on top of those look how cute and then maybe these end pieces I’ll also add to this one so you can get creative you can have your friends if you trust your kids they can help you put these together too beautiful Russian bleen happy New Year enjoy