Sourdough Crumpets / Blueberry Hotcakes

These Sourdough crumpets or hotcakes have been a revelation in our house. They are absolutely divine. Forget pancakes these are so much better! So light and fluffy, yet crunchy and a perfect vehicle for butter and honey, or cheese, or blueberries and bacon and maple syrup New York style.

For anyone with a sourdough starter I can only say, you must try this! For people without starters, it is so worth starting one just to make these. I have a dedicated jar of sourdough starter just ready for making crumpets whenever we need them.

Step 1: Get your starter ready - take two tablespoons of your regular sourdough starter and place in a large jar with 1 cup of white spelt flour (or regular unbleached white flour), mix with warm water thoroughly to make a porridge like consistency and leave jar out covered with a cloth for a few hours to activate the mix before retiring to the fridge until you are ready to make crumpets the following day or whenever you get around to it. It doesn't matter how old your starter becomes, it will perk up when you add the bicarb just before making the crumpets.

Here is the recipe, adapted from King Arthur Flour

Sourdough Crumpets / Sourdough Blueberry Hotcakes
1 cup sourdough starter
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp bicarb soda in a little water
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Pour out what starter you have from your jar in a mixing bowl (the remnants of your starter in the jar will be enough to get your next batch of starter ready for future crumpets - add 1 cup of flour to the jar with water and mix to a porridge like consistency and return the jar to the fridge with a cloth lid)
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Add salt and sugar to the starter and mix well. 
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Heat a good quality fry pan with a little butter and lightly grease your crumpet rings/egg rings or cookie cutter rings and place them on the pan to heat up. If you don't have rings, don't worry, just blob the mix on the pan without rings and they'll be more like hotcakes. 
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Just before cooking, add the bicarb water mix and mix into the batter well. Put a dessertspoon full of mix into each ring, cook on a medium to low heat. You need to cook them until they dry out on top and the bubbles burst. Might take up to 10 minutes. Try to use the mix up in one cooking batch as the bicarb will wear off quickly unless you get the batter cooking. 
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If you don't have enough rings while you wait for them to cook, just pour the rest of the batter into small fry pan and make one really big crumpet which you can cut into segments and toast. 

When the top has dried out, remove the rings, flip the crumpets and just cook for 1-2 mins on the bubbles side just to brown. 

Before serving, lightly toast the crumpets then lather on butter and honey, or stack them up pancakes style with fruit, yogurt and maple syrup.

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Variation (as pictured) - Sourdough Blueberry Hotcakes: try adding a handful of frozen blueberries to the mix before cooking the crumpets or hotcakes and serving New York style a stack of them with crispy bacon and maple syrup. 

Enjoy!

Extreme Darning and an Aussie Afternoon Tea

Yesterday at the markets, probably my last before baby arrives, I did a spot of extreme needle felt darning. A young gentleman had holes all through his favourite jumper and requested my darning services. The holes were enormous and required traditional woven darning before being reinforced with some spotty needle felting.

I say extreme because of a number of circumstances, namely the gale force winds, the cold, the rain, the time pressure and the large and numerous holes in the fabric. Not to mention my extremely pregnant state! Just two weeks to go!

Anyway, it was a bit of a challenge for my still new darning skills but I liked the results, definitely more interesting than before. I just hope the jumper remains a favourite of his! 

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Today it has been raining all day and lately we've all had a bit of a taste for crumpets since it's winter so I decided to try the homemade variety. 

I didn't have the traditional circular crumpet rings so we ended up with crumpets in the shape of Australia, a koala and hearts. 

To go with this very Aussie afternoon tea we had Native Roasted Wattleseed Tea (delicious!) and lashings of butter and Aussie bush honey. All very comforting on a cold wet Melbourne afternoon.