The important thing about crumpets is that they must have the holes in them, it’s vitally important. Served warm from the pan, or toasted up later you can spread with butter or your preserve of choice, the heat melts the topping and it fills those holes up soaking the centre.

Crumpets were an Anglo-Saxon invention. In early times, they were hard pancakes cooked on a griddle, rather than the soft and spongy crumpets of the Victorian era which were made with yeast. The crumpet-makers of the Midlands and London developed the characteristic holes, by adding extra baking powder to the yeast dough.

When discussing crumpets it is important to know that “crumpet” also is British slang for a woman regarded as physically attractive, it  has also been used as a non-sexual term of endearment. But can also be used in the context of “Did you get a bit of crumpet last night?” I can’t go into what that means here, it is a family site after all!

The dough for crumpets is very loose, more a batter really.. think pancake batter (American pancakes anyway). Do sit it to one side to rise though. When it’s done move it back to next to the stove, stir it gently to knock some of the air out (I wish I knew why, but I didn’t want to skip a step and ruin my chances for crumpets).

Now, you can get all fancy and use crumpet rings, I used cookie cutters, you can go without but they’ll be less neat and won’t gain the holes as well as they could. Since I don’t have cookie cutters all the same size I used 3 different sized ones.

Heat up your pan, similar to the English Muffins you want medium heat and lightly greased. Cast iron would be wonderful, but not necessary. Lightly grease the rings too if your using them, place them into the pan.

Using a greased ice cream scoop or something similar where you can get consistent quantities, place the batter in the rings. These first few I did came out rather thin, I then went too far in the other direction where they didn’t cook fully in the centre and didn’t develop the holes very well either. About half an inch worked well in the end.

Cook until you see the holes develop and the top with change colour as the batter cooks. Take off the ring with some tongs and flip the crumpet over. Technically, traditionally the top wasn’t cooked, just leave it on the one side to cook fully. I like flipping them over just to give them a touch of colour on the top.

Then we got all creative and figured if round cookie cutters worked so would others… be sure to grease them well, we didn’t and then broke as we tried to remove the crumpet from the cutter.

We ate some straight out the pan, some were saved overnight in an airtight container and toasted for breakfast the following morning. And a few were wrapped well and frozen, to be pulled out and toasted as desired.