One rainy morning during the summer holidays Buddy came up with an excellent if ambitious idea for an indoor activity. I remember being very surprised at his plan; he was determined that we make our very own home-baked crumpets - from scratch.
Although we eat plenty of the shop-bought variety as pictured above (Buddy has arranged his into breakfast umbrellas here), I had never before thought of actually baking these bubbly wonders. I was delighted when Delia came up trumps with a simple recipe in her Complete Illustrated Cookery Course. Plus it required a very short list of ingredients - perfect.
We had to tweak the recipe slightly, due to our shortage of dried yeast and lack of egg rings - egg rings!? What the heck? as Daisy would say. But we still managed to successfully produce a batch of 10 delicious crumpets with our slightly reduced quantities of ingredients and improvised egg rings - metal cookie cutters. We have since tried making novelty crumpets using our dog and rabbit shaped cutters, but returned to simple circles after severing one too many peripheral crumpet-parts.
Ingredients
250 ml milk
50 ml water
1 teaspoon caster sugar
7g (1 sachet) dried yeast
200g plain flour
level teaspoon salt
butter, for greasing
Equipment
a non-stick frying pan
metal cookie cutters
Served warm with butter, cream cheese, jam or marmite, these home-made classics get the double thumbs-up from Bud - high praise indeed. They don't stay fresh as long as shop-bought crumpets, a maximum of three days in an air tight container, but they freeze pretty well. Ask a couple of friends over for a teatime treat and you may not need to store or freeze - it's quite possible to polish off the whole batch in one delicious sitting. Enjoy.
