home-made crumpets

home-made crumpets

• 5 Jun 2017

Growing up, my winter after school snack was always a toasted crumpet slathered with butter. A few months back I saw a photo of a chocolate crumpet on instagram and was immediately intrigued and vowed to make a batch. However as I'd not made crumpets before I thought I better make a batch of regular crumpets first.



I didn't have any crumpet rings though, so I found a set online, ordered them then waited 2 weeks for the crumpet rings to make the 7 km journey from the store to the local post office. Thanks Australia Post.

Since their arrival, I've made 2 batches of crumpets. I used the recipe on the back of the crumpet rings and also this Bill Granger recipe. The Bill Granger recipe took longer to make and had more steps but yielded a more consistent crumpet so that's the recipe I'm posting. 

The home-made crumpets are smaller, softer and definitely more tasty than the shop bought kind. They freeze very well and as I discovered, make an excellent midnight snack toasted and topped with butter and some home made blackberry jam.

Here's the recipe for you and just a reminder that I use a 250 ml cup for all my recipes.

English Crumpets - recipe from Sydney Food by Bill Granger  

Makes 16 8.5cm crumpets  

Ingredients 

1½ cups of milk 

1½ tsp sugar 

7g dried yeast 

375g plain flour 

½ tsp salt 

½ tsp baking soda 

200ml water 

Method 

Pour the milk into a saucepan and heat until just warm. Transfer into a bowl and add the sugar and yeast. Allow to stand for 10 minutes or until the milk starts to bubble. 

Sift the flour and salt into a bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the milk/yeast mixture to the flour and beat until completely smooth. The mixture will be quite thick at this stage. Cover with plastic wrap and stand in a warm place for 1- 1½ hours until doubled in volume and full of air bubbles. 

Mix the baking soda with the water and combine this with the crumpet mixture to make a kind of gloopy batter. Leave to stand for 30 minutes 

Heat a heavy based frying pan or griddle over a medium heat and grease with a little butter. Thoroughly grease the crumpet moulds and re-grease them between batches. Place the crumpet rings on the hot surface and place 2 tbs of mixture inside the ring. Don’t overfill as the mixture will rise in the rings whilst cooking. 

Within a short period of time your crumpets should get small bubbles all over the surface that begin to break. Cook for about 10 minutes until surface is covered in broken bubbles and the top is dry.  Remove the crumpet rings, turn gently and cook on the other side until lightly browned. Remove from the pan and wrap the crumpets in a clean tea towel while you cook the rest. Any leftovers can be frozen for later and toasted before serving.

I can't imagine buying shop bought crumpets again. Now that I have my crumpet rings, it's time to work on that chocolate crumpet recipe.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian