I’ve always liked crumpets for breakfast but haven’t made them before. As a child I favourite topping was golden syrup!! After reading lots of slightly different methods for making them I settled on an old recipe from Elizabeth David. You need a ring to spoon the dough into for cooking. I couldn’t find one of the size I wanted so I used the sides of two 11cms spring form cake tins. They worked perfectly. At this size I ended up with seven large crumpets.
Ingredients
1tsp sugar
200ml blue milk
100ml boiling water
1 tbsp yeast
250g plain flour
1 tsp salt
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
Butter for cooking
Mix the sugar, milk and boiling water in a bowl and stir in the yeast. Leave in a warm place for 15 minutes until frothy.
Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl and stir in the yeast and milk mixture. You need to stir vigorously with a strong wooden spoon until the mixture is smooth. Cover and leave in a warm place for about 60-90 minutes until the batter has risen substantially and is a mass of tiny bubbles.
Mix the bicarbonate of soda with 50ml warm water and stir this into the batter. Cover and leave in a warm place for about 15-30 minutes. There’ll be lots of bigger bubbles.
Melt the butter and brush the inside of the rings you’re going to use. Heat a frying pan on a low/medium heat and grease the pan. Put the rings flat into the pan and spoon some mixture into each. I found that 1½ big mixing spoonsful were best for the ring size I used. Make a test crumpet first to work that out.
Cook slowly until the top is dry and festooned with holes. This will take at least 5-7 minutes. Lift the rings off for the last minute. I then flipped the crumpets to brown the top a little. Alternatively you can grill the tops. If you’re eating the crumpets later, simply toast and then slather with butter and your favourite topping.
We ate ours with delicious guava jelly – Mike picked the guavas from our trees and my mother very kindly made the jelly. Perfect with the crumpets and a cup of tea!!
