In my childhood I have memory of a clockwork crepe maker using an alcohol burner. It was quite compact, and sat on a small side table
The glow of the burner and the whir of the clockwork mechanism was somewhat "romantic", and of course there was endless discussion of whom got the next one, and what they where going to put on it (golden syrup, currants, and lemon juice!)
It looked something like this
The large drum had a circle of steel wrapped around it, and the clockwork motor rotated it against the pickup roller in the batter tray, which transfered batter only to the circle, not the whole drum. The alcohol burner heated the drum so by the time it got to the other side it was cooked and slid into the left hand tray. The crepes were nearly transparent, and just beautiful
The machine is very similar to how I understand commercial tortillas are made?
Can you still buy these, if so where?
If not, are there modern automatic crepe makers for domestic use? Looking for something way under a grand!
I can make a perfectly good crepe on the comal, but this is not fun for a whole party load!
Best Answer
This is called a crepe maker drum or an automatic crepe maker.
CMCRP makes one that retails for about $5000 and can produce as much as 80m of crepes per hour (more than 1 mile / day). Probably worth it if you can afford it and need that many crepes. It is made by and can be purchased from "PastaBiz.com"
You can see a video of it on YouTube.
Another model is the ANKO CR-200, a video can be found here, and you could contact ANKO to find a local distributor.
Good Luck!