Luke Alexander

This is my first attempt at making crumpets from scratch at home.  While not entirely successful (the crumpets didn’t taste very nice), I have however resolved to record for posterity my first attempt here.  That way, when I am a world-renowned crumpet chef (chef du crûmpé),  my fans and inevitable imitators will have some small token of encouragement, and something they can print out for me to autograph.

This recipe is primarily based on Delia Smith’s recipe, with some of my own modifications – notably the addition of a healthy element of gin to the process.

Preparation

First, buy some crumpet rings.  Or I should say, egg poaching rings.  It seems that amongst the crumpeteratti there is a tradition of starting crumpet recipes by bemoaning the demise of the dedicated crumpet ring.  Lacking the requisite experience and grey hairs, however, I shall merely direct you to your favourite search engine for further elucidation and merriment concerning this learned and diverting discussion.

Once you have bought your barely-suitable egg rings, return to your living space and prepare to take your first steps towards becoming a crumpet chef.  Congratulations!

For the preparation phase you will require:

• a good shirt and colourful cufflinks (or similar vestments for the ladies)
• recently-ironed trousers (jeans are fine, but they must not be distressed, either naturally or by manufacturer’s intention)
• suitable underwear
• approx 500ml of gin (Gordon’s will suffice – as always – but why not treat yourself to an artisan gin with some exotic botanicals.  Go for it.  Why not?)
• tonic water
• ice
• a lemon or lime, following your own preference as a guideline
• aromatic bitters (optional)

Once you have put your outside clothes to one side, replace them immediately (careful to avoid making yourself cold in the process) with your chosen crumpet-making outfit.  Congratulations!  You’re one step closer to the crumpet of your dreams.

Preliminaries

Next, repair to the kitchen with the other (non wearable) items above, and of course those ever-controversial egg-cum-crumpet rings  Slice the lemon or lime, squeeze a few drops of juice into a tall glass half-full of ice, pour in enough gin to cover the ice, and top up with tonic water.  Add aromatic bitters, optionally, as per your desire.

Sip your gin and tonic with pleasure.  Congratulations!  You are yet another step closer to the crumpet of your dreams.

At this stage you may find it politic to take a small break.  Watch some TV, speak to a friend, read a good book.  You cannot rush crumpets.

If you have access to a device for playing music in the area that you will be using as a kitchen, now is a perfect time to get your crumpeting playlist going.  For my first crumpet attempt, I used Chopin’s Mazurkas, which I found to be most in-fitting with the endeavour.  Your taste and judgement may, disappointingly, vary.

Sip your gin throughout, and if necessary refill your glass as above.  Once you are suitably fortified, stand boldly upright, stride into the kitchen and gather about you the following ingredients.  If you do not have these ingredients, it would have been helpful if you had bought them along with those hateful egg rings earlier.  Silly you.  Off you go, then.

• some flour (plain, a bag of)
• dried yeast in inconveniently oversized sachets
• butter (it is crucial that you fervently believe this is butter – merely doubting that it is not, is not appropriate)
• milk (your housemate’s milk is fine – after all, he’s the one who has cereal all the time so why should you replace it?)
• water
• caster sugar

Delia’s original recipe has some further details – specific quantities and so forth.  I trust that you will turn to her for these specificities. If you follow the spirit of crumpet making from this recipe and the strict details from hers, you will – at the least – be nicely drunk.  And who can blame you.  You are taking your first steps to becoming a crumpet chef.  Congratulations!

The crumpet

If you have never seen a crumpet before, or do not know what one is, now would be a perfect time to find out.  Surrounded as  you are at this stage by your ingredients, find a suitable surface to rest your laptop or handheld internet device and search for ‘crumpet‘.  Look closely at the images that return.  In a mere two hours time, you will have made between two and twelve of those.  Congratulations!  You are well on your way to the crumpet of your dreams.

Now, ensuring that your glass is well filled with life-giving gin, you can begin the crumpeting process.

The crumpeting process

First, take a small saucepan, place it on your hob, and turn it to a medium heat.  Put a decent whack of milk into the pan (about three times what you’d put into a bowl of cereal, or eight to nine times the amount you would use to tame a cup of tea that had been brewed too long).  Add a tad of water (conversion values from tads to millilitres and other new-fangled measures can be found online).

Heat until this liquid is moderately warm.  Delia suggests it be ‘hand hot’, and I found the best way to measure this was to test it with my hand.

Then, put the liquid into a bowl, and add one and a bit inconvenient sachets of yeast.  And a bit of sugar.  Say a builder’s tea amount?  I’m sure it doesn’t matter massively.

Leave the liquid for a bit, until it has a weird brown head of foam.  Yuk.

Then (or if you’re massively ambitious like Delia, at the same time) sift quite a lot of flour – about half a human head full – and a bit of salt into a bowl.  When the yeasty liquid is ready, make a little crater and pour it into the middle.

If all is going to plan, you will now have a bowl of increasingly soggy flour covered in yeasty, watery milk.  This is not as bad as it sounds.  In fact, it’s exactly right.  Congratulations!  You are now approximately half way towards the crumpet of your dreams.

Now cover your bowl of yeasty muck with a tea towel, place somewhere relatively warm and leave it  be.  You will need to leave it be for approximately 45 minutes – coincidentally the length of a network TV episode in the US. So refill your glass of gin, find somewhere warm for yourself, and watch one.  For premium contextual relevance, I recommend an episode of John Adams (although not referenced directly, it has to be assumed that crumpets played their part in the colony’s separation), or two episodes of a sit com like Friends or How I Met Your Mother during which a character makes food (either disastrously or non-disastrously, to taste).

The crumpeting process, continued

Some time after setting the bowl of muck aside, it will be ready to serve.  If you have been drinking your gin at the appropriate rate throughout, it should be around the time at which you are starting to have trouble focusing on the TV.  If in doubt, try to stand up.  If it takes you at least one and a half attempts, you are ready to return to your crumpeting.

Return to your crumpeting.  Look at the bowl of muck.  Has it risen to a fluffy, airy, foamy batter?  It has?  Congratulations!  You are one step closer to the crumpet of your dreams.

Now that your crumpet mixture is ready, get a flat-bottomed frying pan, greased heavily with butter, and your pitifully inadequate egg rings, and grease them too.  By the end of this process, everything should be pretty well greased.

Great.

Now, put the frying pan and those sordidly inappropriate rings on a medium heat.  You can work out what this would be for your own cooker by taking the highest number shown on the dial and dividing it by two.  In some cases, it may be necessary to add or subtract half a unit to get the nearest round number.

Wait a little while, sipping your gin thoughtfully.

Once your greasy tools are sufficiently warmed, it’s time to take your final crumpet-making steps.  Congratulations!  You’re now very few steps away from the crumpet of your dreams.

Boldly take a tablespoon / other big spoon in your hand and thrust it into the mixture.  If the mixture is right, and you are sufficiently drunk on gin, this should feel roughly like slaying a dragon.  Congratulations!  You hero.

Using the spoon, move a portion of the mixture into the middle of one of your rings.  Repeat for however many rings you might have.

Open your mouth, and speak these words in an expectant whisper: “My crumpet is on its way”.

Your crumpet is on its way.

About five minutes / half a glass of gin later, the crumpet should have risen slightly in the ring, and will have those little holes in the top like it does in the shop.  Now remove the ring, flip it over and cook it for a pretty short time on the other side.

Remove from the heat.

Place it on a plate.

Pick the plate up.

Congratulations!  You are now holding a plate on which rests the crumpet of your dreams!

Repeat.

Eat.