Crumpets Minus Croquette
This weekend was quite pleasant, even despite my great stairmaster disappointment and the intrusion of rain into what I was hoping would be a sunny Saturday romping in the grass. The get-together I had planned for the day was supposed to be a croquette picnic at the park. I knew before hand from the forecasts that it would probably be rained out, but I had already sold myself on the idea of making a nice afternoon tea picnic with crumpets and curd to go with the croquette theme. So I spent Friday night doing a comparative test of three different crumpet recipes since I had never made them before and didn't know what a proper recipe should include.
Recipe #1 called for an egg but no baking soda, Recipe #2 had more butter, no egg, and dissolved baking soda solution stirred in oddly after rising, and Recipe #3 had no egg, no butter, had baking soda included with everything else before the rising, and a higher liquid:flour ratio than the others. I had a jolly old time babysitting my three bubbly bowls of batter, watching them cook up side by side in my impromptu ring molds made out of water chestnut cans, figuring out proper ring lubing technique by trial and error (turns out the awful nonstick spray with flour in it is the best way to keep them from sticking to the rings), getting the griddle heat and cooking times down, and seeing how each variation came out.
Batter #2 tasted quite good, but was more biscuit-like in texture and the dense, sticky dough and post-rise baking soda addition technique made it annoying to work with. Batter #3 looked promising while cooking, but was a bit too thin and airy to hold up and tasted too yeasty in the end (although that was likely due to my halving the recipe and not quite halving the yeast amount). Batter #1 was clearly the crumpetiest winner of the three.
So Saturday morning I whipped up a fresh double batch of the winning batter, thinning it slightly with a little extra milk to enhance the signature crumpet bubble tunnels (which had come out best in the thinner batter #3) and griddled up a tray full for our get together in spite of the rained-out croquette theme. To go with them I also made a blackberry-lemon curd out of some left-over blackberry coulis that I hadn't ended up using for my mom's cake the previous week. It was particularly good over a nice tangy smear of goat cheese. I was quite pleased with them, both in process and result, and hope to find another excuse to make them again. But anyhow, enough prattling on about my infernal cooking endeavors - fun to do, boring to read about.
The upshot was that we had a fun afternoon hanging out, toasting crumpets, and playing games with AP and PW. AP even graciously took our displaced papazan chair off our hands so it didn't have to sit awkwardly taking up space while waiting for a new home. Splendid!
Recipe #1 called for an egg but no baking soda, Recipe #2 had more butter, no egg, and dissolved baking soda solution stirred in oddly after rising, and Recipe #3 had no egg, no butter, had baking soda included with everything else before the rising, and a higher liquid:flour ratio than the others. I had a jolly old time babysitting my three bubbly bowls of batter, watching them cook up side by side in my impromptu ring molds made out of water chestnut cans, figuring out proper ring lubing technique by trial and error (turns out the awful nonstick spray with flour in it is the best way to keep them from sticking to the rings), getting the griddle heat and cooking times down, and seeing how each variation came out.
Batter #2 tasted quite good, but was more biscuit-like in texture and the dense, sticky dough and post-rise baking soda addition technique made it annoying to work with. Batter #3 looked promising while cooking, but was a bit too thin and airy to hold up and tasted too yeasty in the end (although that was likely due to my halving the recipe and not quite halving the yeast amount). Batter #1 was clearly the crumpetiest winner of the three.
So Saturday morning I whipped up a fresh double batch of the winning batter, thinning it slightly with a little extra milk to enhance the signature crumpet bubble tunnels (which had come out best in the thinner batter #3) and griddled up a tray full for our get together in spite of the rained-out croquette theme. To go with them I also made a blackberry-lemon curd out of some left-over blackberry coulis that I hadn't ended up using for my mom's cake the previous week. It was particularly good over a nice tangy smear of goat cheese. I was quite pleased with them, both in process and result, and hope to find another excuse to make them again. But anyhow, enough prattling on about my infernal cooking endeavors - fun to do, boring to read about.
The upshot was that we had a fun afternoon hanging out, toasting crumpets, and playing games with AP and PW. AP even graciously took our displaced papazan chair off our hands so it didn't have to sit awkwardly taking up space while waiting for a new home. Splendid!