This Mother’s Day, Let Paris Starn Show You How to Make the Ultimate Breakfast in Bed

This Mother’s Day, moms everywhere will wake up to the same touching scene: their children and spouses presenting them with breakfast in bed. It’s a gesture that is the epitome of “it’s the thought that counts” (as a kid, this writer remembers presenting some under-toasted bread). But this year, we asked food stylist Paris Starn to do her take on the tradition—and to essentially create a Mother’s Day mood-board for the rest of us in the process.

“I had so much fun conceptualizing a Mother’s Day spread,” Starn says of her breakfast in bed tray. “I combined all of my mother’s favorites: lilacs, a latte, and pancakes,” she says. The result: crepes served with lemon, sugared lilacs, and butter. (Starn said she was inspired by those served at the James Beard Award-nominated Café Mutton in Hudson.)

She picked up flowers—making sure they were pesticide and insecticide free—at the Union Square Farmer’s Market. Some, she put in a vase. Others she turned into decorative edible accents: “I then decorated some of the lilac flowers by dipping them in egg white, blotting them on a towel, sprinkling the sugar on top, and letting them dry overnight in the fridge,” she says.

Starn also made her batter the night before, which included lemon zest-infused super-fine sugar. “All I had to do the next morning was quickly finish up the batter and then fry up the pancakes,” she says. “While the pancakes cooked, I set up the tray: placing a lilac sprig in an egg cup, and making the latte. I plated everything on my mother’s wedding dinnerware, with napkins and silverware.”

Find Starn’s recipe to recreate this Mother’s Day—or to inspire you in future years—below.

Paris Starn’s Breakfast-in-Bed Crêpes

On my first trip to Cafe Mutton in Hudson, NY, I got their crêpes (definitely go and try them if you are in the area). They were excellent, and I couldn’t stop thinking about them. They were pudgy and tender in the center with crisp airy edges—unlike any crêpe I’ve had before.