I remember the first time I had real English crumpets.  It was during a delightful afternoon tea with my mom at the Orangery in London, and they brought out these delicious English crumpets that we topped with butter, jam and clotted cream.  When I returned to California after that trip I was determined to find some English crumpets so I could enjoy them with a cup of tea on a lazy afternoon.

While many markets did have the English crumpets, they always contained some sort of preservative (usually soy) that prevented me from enjoying them due to my food allergies.  When the Englishman moved to the states, we talked about making our own English crumpets but never got around to it.  I finally decided enough was enough and it was time to finally try our hand at crumpet making. (*spoiler alert – the crumpets came out delicious but were kinda ugly looking)

The thing I learned about English crumpets is they require minimal ingredients.  The real key to getting the crumpets to turn out is by using crumpet rings.  We ended up using tuna tins to improvise.

You will have to exercise a bit of patience when making these English crumpets since you do need to wait about an hour for the dough to get nice and spongy, but I promise the end result is so worth it!

English Crumpets (adapted from this recipe)

Ingredients:

2 cups and 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 tsp quick rise yeast

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/4 cups warm water

1 1/4 cups almond milk (regular milk works too)

Cooking spray

Directions:

Mix your flour, yeast, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Combine water and almond milk in a separate bowl and quickly whisk the mixture together until nice and smooth. Cover with a towel and let rise in a warm place until spongy, about 1 hour.

Place a skillet over medium heat (or 325F).  Coat skillet with cooking spray. Coat your tuna tins (or crumpet rings) with cooking spray.  Place tins on skillet. Slowly pour your batter into the tins (but not too much).  Gently flip the tins over.

Let crumpets cook on the skillet for 5-7 minutes or until they start to turn brown.  Once crumpets start to turn brown, slowly remove the tin lids. Flip the crumpets in the skillet so both sides are browned evenly (another 3-5 minutes). Put crumpets on a plate and enjoy!

A Few Notes:

• As you can tell our English crumpets kind of expanded a little too much.  That’s due to the fact that we put too much batter in the tins.
• Make sure they are well cooked and springy before removing the tin lid to help ensure that the batter does not overflow.
• These crumpets taste amazing with some raspberry jam and butter on top.