The great pikelet conumdrum

Having successfully made crumpets I turned my thoughts to that great childhood favourite the pikelet.

My memory seemed to think that in amongst the family cookbooks was a recipe that suggested there was a fundamental difference between the two. Time to consult the internet (it's reasonably well indexed, so you can work back to accurate).

Disaster ! 


It seems the word pikelet covers a whole host of delicious toastery snacks. The Welsh seem to thing its a kind of drop scone, some people think its another word for crumpet and the Australians seem to think something else again. So I'm talking about a thing that's been  griddled has holes in the top (like a crumpet) but is under about 5mm thick. General opinion is that they are just crumpets made without crumpet rings. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is in this camp, but interestingly he adds more flour to the pikelet batter,I think that will do for me.

So once this snow/freeze lets up and my kitchen is more amenable to yeast I'll have another stab, maybe tweaking the crumpet recipe a little and trying to pikelet some of them.

Crumpets

One thing the UK's food does that nobody else does is toasting. From plain bread to teacakes & the like we have a lovely range of toaster snacks. Crumpets must come up near the top, normaly I buy them but I saw a recipe on the TV and decided to give it a go. Crumpets are a leavened batter which is given a further bit of lift, poppiness by the addition of baking soda. You need a chef's ring or crumpet rings to put on your griddle or frying pan you get something like this :-



As you heat them they rise, and more importantly the bubbles burst up through the surface and you get the lovely butter holding matrix that makes crumpets great. Unfortunately I think mine may have suffered from the cold snap we are having which may have rendered the yeast a bit sluggish. They came out a bit less holey than expected.




The other side effect of the cold snap is I've needed to have a good fire blazing. I'm lucky enough to own 2 toasting forks and the farmshop had some quality butter. It was pretty sucessful but I think next time I'll find somewhere warmer for the dough to rise.

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