I woke up stupidly early this morning with a deep urge to make crumpets from breakfast. I decided to use the crumpet recipe that was used in last weeks Something for the Weekend. It was really interesting seeing the dough develop and it was a really springy dough texture. They tasted delicious (far far better than shop brought variety), but the texture wasn’t quite right. I think I may have over beaten it when I added the milk. We started out making the crumpets with a metal pastry ring, but also tried pouring the batter straight into the pan and they turned out more like pikelets. I did take pictures, but they just look awful!
Not to be undeterred I decided to make cinder toffee this afternoon. I’ve always been a bit scared of boiling sugar, worried about burning myself. I had heard from some people that the Nigella recipe for cinder toffee doesn’t always work so I found an alternative recipe in a back copy of GFM. If only I knew cinder toffee was so easy, I would have made it ages ago. It was amazing to watch the reaction between the sugar and bicarb. My sister is coming to stay tomorrow, but I can’t guarantee there will be any cinder toffee left by then. The pieces just keep on falling into my mouth!
Cinder Toffee (Honeycomb Recipe)
Ingredients:
- 5 tbsp granulated sugar
- 2 tbsp golden syrup
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Instructions:
1) Heat the sugar and syrup gently in a saucepan until sugar has melted, begins to boil and turns a golden yellow colour.
2) Whisk in bicarb with a hand whisk then pour quickly onto baking parchment. Allow to set.
tip: to clean toffee encrusted pan, pour boiling inside pan and the toffee will melt away.