While it saddens me that The Great Mouse Detective has ultimately fallen out of the light of widely known Disney animated features, I must celebrate the day that this wonderful piece of work was released to the public (and hope that it's included in the Disney-to-Netflix migration coming later this year). As such, I've made crumpets, or a take on them at least.
Not being of anything vaguely resembling British descent, I had to consult the internet on where to start with this particular escapade. Ultimately, I wound up drawing on Bread A Day's crumpet recipe as my initial springboard, and kind of went a bit... astray from there (I really need to check this out more... it's an entire site devoted to BREAD. That's like... 50% of my diet). My version is made to be more of a sweet crumpet, rather than an English muffin impersonator.
Ingredients:
- 3c White Cake Mix, Plus Extra
- 2 Eggs
- 2c Whole Milk, Plus Extra
- 4tsp Baking Cocoa
- 1pkg Dry Yeast
- 2tbsp Butter Or Substitute, Melted
Equipment:
- Mixing Bowl
- Whisk
- Griddle Or Frying Pan
- Spatula
- Plastic Wrap
- Sifter or Fine Sieve
Be ye forewarned: there's a lot of wait time involved in making these. Not like active prep time where you're having to do things, but more to the effect of "you won't be able to eat these shortly after breaking out the ingredients." So if you're hangry and in need of an edible sacrifice immediately if not sooner... check out my Oreo Mousse instead.
The first bit that you'll want to do is whisk together the eggs, milk, and butter, until they're well blended. Once that's all together, you'll want to mix in enough cake mix to get a batter like you're making pancakes. This may take a bit more or less, especially if the humidity level in your area is tripping out. If you over do it, no biggie, just add more milk. Fully whisk in the cocoa and yeast.
Now comes the tough part. You'll want to cover the batter with plastic wrap and leave it somewhere vaugely warm-ish to rise until it's all bubbly. Mine took over two hours for that to happen, but I also made the mistake of leaving it in an area where my husband controls the air conditioning. I'm pretty sure I saw a Yeti go skirting about the room.
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| For now, we shall part ways. But 'tis not forever. |
Once you've actually survived the wait, heat up your griddle or frying pan, and grease it lightly with... well, whatever your preferred pan-greasing-method is. Getting the temperature right on these will take some work, so you'll want to start with only pouring out one of these at a time until you get the temperature set right. This is the point of the show where some people break out egg rings or English muffin forms... I just kind of free handed it due to the lack thereof. It's really kind of like making pancakes.
Turns out about a quarter cup of the batter is enough to get a crumpet that's sufficiently large, yet still easy to turn over. It stays one way up until there are lots of bubbles (apparently the main distinguishing factor between crumpets and English muffins is the bubbles) and the top is "dry", then you flip it over and finish cooking it.
I discovered two things while cooking these. One is that my griddle doesn't cook evenly. Sadness. Secondly is that these are amazing with Papa Murphy's cream cheese dip that comes with their cinnamon wheels. One of these days, I'm just going to have to go in there and ask for a gallon of the stuff. Caramel sauce or butterscotch ice cream topping also works really well.
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