This blini recipe is a well-known Russian dish that is frequently eaten during the Maslenitsa holiday. There are a variety of sweet and savory filling options. You’ll get the hang of it, so don’t worry if the first few don’t work out.
| Prep Time: | 15 mins |
| Cook Time: | 30 mins |
| Additional Time: | 20 mins |
| Total Time: | 1 hr 5 mins |
| Servings: | 6 |
| Yield: | 20 blinis |
Ingredients
- 4 ¼ cups milk
- 5 large eggs
- 2 tablespoons white sugar
- ⅓ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ⅛ teaspoon citric acid powder
- 4 cups all-purpose flour
- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 cup boiling water
- ⅔ cup butter, divided
Instructions
- Beat together milk and eggs in a large bowl until combined. Beat in sugar and salt. Mix in baking soda and citric acid until incorporated. Blend in flour, a little at a time, until combined. Beat in oil. Pour in boiling water, stirring constantly, until batter is thin and watery. Let rest for about 20 minutes.
- Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a small frying pan over medium-high heat. Pick the pan up off the heat. Pour in a ladleful of batter while you rotate your wrist, tilting the pan, so batter forms a circle and coats the bottom. The blini should be very thin.
- Return the pan to the heat. Cook blini for 90 seconds. Carefully lift up edge of blini to see if it’s fully cooked: edges will be golden and bottom surface should have brown spots. Flip blini over and cook for 1 minute more.
- Transfer blini to a plate lined with a clean kitchen towel. Continue cooking remaining batter, adding 1 tablespoon butter to the pan for every 4 blinis. Stack blinis and cover with another kitchen towel to keep warm.
- Spread desired filling in the center of each blini. Fold 3 times to make a triangle shape or fold up all 4 sides, like a small burrito.
- You can fill the blinis with berries, chocolate sauce, cooked ground meat, or mashed potatoes with onion.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 525 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 57 g |
| Cholesterol | 153 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 2 g |
| Protein | 14 g |
| Saturated Fat | 13 g |
| Sodium | 378 mg |
| Sugars | 10 g |
| Fat | 26 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
Really good, but makes A LOT of food, so cut down recipe for smaller batches
Excellent. Used sour cream and strawberry preserves for a Shrove Tuesday dinner at our church. These were a big hit!
Thank you to share this recipe, I made it for NYE, t was very easy and I had some sour cream+salmon+ chives on top. Yummy ??
It came out great! I didn’t have baking soda so I used baking powder instead, and I didn’t use the citric acid. I also added 8x the sugar to give it that sweet taste.
Easy to make, I’m a beginner and these turned out great on my first try. I made everything 2/5 of the quantities here (e.g. 2 eggs), and didn’t put the citric acid. Got about 12 blinis.
Amazing!! I subbed the citric acid for lemon juice and they turned out great! Definitely my new favourite recipie for pancakes, especially because they’re super easy to make!
Great recipe. Yields 40 pancakes.
This recipe is great! Better and easier than crepes. I have been using it for a year and a half now, but a few months ago I just simplified it after seeing other recipes on the internet. Now I just use 1c flour, 1/2 T sugar, pinch salt for dry, and 1 egg, 1T oil, and 1 1/4c milk for wet. The results are identical ! They are also almost the same with water, if out of milk (which is not weird; bread can have either). Mixing is also easier by adding half of the milk to the whisked egg & oil, then all of the dry, mix until smooth paste, then slowly add rest of liquid, to avoid clumps. Rest about 10-20mins. I use my 8in cast iron, brushed with oil between each, and with 1/3c portions, this makes about 7 blini.
Wonderful…. With blueberry jam, honey, cheese, egg & cheese , maple syrup…….
Just like my mom used to make in Russia! I substituted for lemon juice and didn’t have veg oil(used olive oil). I also didn’t use butter as they came out much better on my ceramic skillet without it.
It was bland and tasted doughy. The quantity was also gargantuan so if you do make it, consider cutting the recipe in half.
These were pretty good! Unlike most regular crepes the first one came out just fine! I filled these with sour cream, fresh dill, fresh ground black pepper, and smoked salmon.
These turned out great, but made wayyy more than we needed. Add sour cream, jam and sweetened condensed milk for perfect tasting blini!
Love this recipe! Have already made it twice in the last month. Once with a ground meat stuffing and the other time with a cheese stuffing. The blini were perfectly fluffy and tasted like my moms (who is Russian/Ukrainian). In addition to subbing lemon for citric acid, I more than doubled the amount of sugar this recipe called for, using 5 tablespoons total. But that just might be me that I like slightly sweeter blini even when used for a savory recipe. I used a smaller ladle (more oval than round) in order to keep the blini relatively thin. This made about 30 or so blini, just like the recipe states.
Great recipe. I would suggest skipping the citric acid and go for real lemon or lime juice.
These are perfect! If your looking for that spongy texture that Russian blini should be – here you go. I personally like adding a tsp. of vanilla or almond and then spreading it with some Nutella then wrapping it around a banana like they do for street food in Ukraine. Delicious.
These are basically crepes. Every ethnic group in Europe has similar and each with slightly different names. I’m an American of Slovak decent…we call them Palacinka. The only thing I don’t do is add boiling water. By the way…they are AWESOME!
Really good! I made it for my family of 3 so I adjusted the serving to 2 and it turned out great! I put sprinkles on some with Nutella and bananas inside and on my husbands I put peach jam and bananas inside! And I didn’t have citric acid powder so I added orange juice instead. Adjusting it to 2 servings made 4, 12″ blinis which was plenty for us. And for the (1 1/4) egg I just used a really big egg from our chickens and it worked fine! These would be really good with sausage, eggs, cheese and maple syrup inside too! Thanks for the yummy recipe!
My boyfriend is from Russia and made me these one day but using his recipe. They were greasy and not very good. I decided to try this recipe and I loved them! I haven’t figured out how to tell him I can make Russian pancakes better than him yet lol.
These taste just like the best blini I’ve enjoyed in Ukraine. I like them best Ukrainian style, filled with red caviar and rolled cigar-shaped. Also delightful filled with salt-cured or smoked salmon and a dab of sour cream, garnished with fresh dill. Any fresh or smoked fish is good in blini. Rolled or folded around any kind of fish spread is delightful. And of course, the best of all is black caviar such as ossetra or beluga, and served with icy cold vodka as a snack or appetizer. Crumbled Bulgarian feta and chopped fresh dill is a tasty budget filling. Like other reviewers, I’ve used lemon juice in them. I strongly object to substituting oil for butter, reducing the amount of butter, or using any kind of reduced fat milk, which affects the flavor negatively. If you want to taste Eastern Europe when you eat them, follow the directions exactly.
These were fantastic! I was really nervous about making them, but they turned out great. I ended up taking a stick of butter and brushing the pan after each blini. These taste like crepes to me, so not sure what the difference is except the country of origin : ) I made a blueberry sauce to go inside and sprinkled some powdered sugar. I halved the recipe for our family of 4 and it was perfect.