Hello! Welcome to week 44 of Rebecca Bakes Cakes & this week I've decided to try & make it a full on multimedia experience, so I'm going to attempt to include not only pictures, but video into the post! Hold onto your hats, I'm not the most technically minded so anything could happen, apologies I've recorded the video on my HTC phone so it's not going to be the best quality. But before we get to this weeks baking, I wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who has voted so far in the Dorset Cereals Little Blog Awards. If you haven't already voted & would like to, just follow the link on the right or click here...So as you can probably tell from the picture, or there in lack of, the crumpets weren't exactly a success! Some of my recipes have been far from perfect, but I've somehow managed to salvage them into something that at least tastes good even if it looks a bit iffy. These were beyond recovery...but rather than try & explain it, I'll tell you the story through the medium of video! Scroll down after the recipe...
450g plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1tsp sugar
7g sachet of fast action yeast
300ml water
300ml milk
As many plain round pastry cutters as you can fit in your frying pan!
1. Sift the flour into a large bowl, stir in the salt, sugar & yeast. Make a well in the centre & add the liquids, beat well until you have a smooth batter. Cover with a tea towel & leave in a warm place for an hour to rise.
So far so good...the batter rose really well!
3. Heat a frying pan over a medium heat, then grease the insides of the pastry cutters with a little oil & place them in the pan to warm up.
4. Pour in enough mixture to half fill the mould & leave to cook for about 8 minutes until lots of little wholes appear on the surface. Pop them out of the moulds & flip them over to cook on the other side for 2 minutes. Lift out & leave to cool on a rack - start the process over again!
Crumpets Take 1, here goes....
Want to see what happened?
So not exactly a resounding success! I think the pastry cutters weren't helping, so I thought I'd try a slight variation on the crumpet theme...
Take 2 managed to produce some bubbles, so the piklets were an improvement on the crumpets, but to be honest they ended up with a consistency somewhat resembling those rubber powerballs I used to have as a kid. After 3 attempts, I cut my losses, gave up & put the kettle on instead! I had heard that crumpets were dead simple to make, so I think I must be missing something? So although there's not really anything to show for this week, I hope the videos of my crumpet incompetence at least gave you a giggle! Onwards & upwards for next week, Rebecca x
I found this recipe while looking for low sodium stuff http://www.recipekey.com/therecipes/Crumpets-and-Muffins-(English) and it does make a point about mixing and letting it rest, so maybe that was missing from yours? It even says about leaving the wooden spoon in the mix while letting it rest. I hope it helps!
ReplyDelete"Cover over, and leave for 1/2 an hour. At the end of that time take a large wooden spoon and well beat up the batter, leave in the spoon, cover over, and leave for another 1/2 an hour.
15. Then give the batter another good beat up. This process must be repeated 3 times with the intervals."
Well at least you had a go......something I've never done!!
ReplyDelete(Nice comentary by the way on the clips.)
Sue xx
At least you gave it a go Rebecca. More than I ever have. Have made pikelets though or drop scones, whatever you want to call them and I have to say they do look rather like your last pics. Keep trying. You can only win in the end. Ann x
ReplyDeleteP.S Going to try your Viennese biscuits next as your lemon drizzle cake was such a success.