Tasty English Treats Pt. 2: All Time Favorites

By Jasmine Cummings on November 28, 2016

One of my favorite things about visiting England – besides getting to see my family, of course, love you guys – is getting my hands on all the delicious food I can’t get here in the States. England has a bad reputation for bad, bland food. I can safely say this is completely undeserved; while there are a number of foods I do feel America does better – pizza, for one, and cola – there are plenty of British foods I absolutely adore.

Bread, for instance, is an example of a simple staple I enjoy more in the UK. It’s thick cut, nicely crusty, and soft as sin, which is great, because I eat a lot of sandwiches. Bacon butties and toasted cheese sandwiches make for quick, tasty lunches. Sausages and bacon are also two foods I prefer in England, to the point where I rarely eat either when I’m at home – the meats are so different they’re almost different foods entirely.

But among all the deliciousness, among all the drinks and sweet candy, there are a few foods that I’d eat all day every day if I could.

1.      Crumpets

There’s one thing I eat as soon as possible after we arrive. Trying to keep yourself awake after an eight hour flight is tricky, but also the best possible way to deal with the jet-lag that comes with a five hour time difference. I keep myself distracted by playing catch up to Doctor Who while eating my tradition first breakfast of crumpets, bacon, and scrambled eggs.

Crumpets are similar to English muffins, but softer, doughier, and full of the tiny, trademark holes that allow melted butter to soak into the bread. With every bite, you get the crispy toasted outside, but the inside is drenched in buttery goodness. I eat these every single day I spend across the ocean with absolutely no regret.

Crumpets and bacon.
exploregram.com/

Directions

Note — you will need 4 crumpet rings, or egg rings or 7.5cm (3in) plain pastry cutters, greased.

•Place the flour and salt into a large bowl and stir in the sugar and yeast making a well in the center. Pour in the warm milk and water and mix to give quite a thick batter. Beat well until completely combined and cover with a tea towel or cling film.

•Leave in a warm place to rise for about an hour until it’s a light, spongy texture. Stir well to knock out any air, add the bicarbonate of soda and pour into a large jug — mix well and allow to stand for a further 30 minutes.

•Heat a non-stick frying pan, or a greased griddle, over a very low heat with a drop of oil or butter. Wipe the pan with kitchen paper to remove excess oil/butter. Sit the greased crumpet rings in the pan and leave to heat up for a couple of minutes.

•Pour in enough mixture to fill the rings just over halfway up the sides. Leave to cook until lots of small holes appear on the surface and the batter has just dried out. This will take about 8-10 minutes.

•Remove the rings and turn over the crumpets to cook for a further minute or two on the other side. Sit the first batch of crumpets on a wire rack whilst continuing to cook the remaining crumpets.

Find the full recipe here.

 2.      Cornish pasties

You’ve probably heard of fish and chips, which even a fish-hater like me can say is pretty damn delicious. You probably haven’t heard of batter sausage and chips, which I can say with complete certainty is absolutely to die for. But my favorite greasy corner shop food, piping hot and wrapped in newspaper, is the Cornish pasty.

When served with chips, pasties are a carb overload that you can’t eat too often, but the cravings just makes them all the more amazing when you eat one. So here’s a recipe for my favorite English dinner food.

Cornish pasty.
express.co.uk

Directions

•To make the pastry: Place the flour, baking powder, salt, butter, and egg yolks into a food processor and blitz until the mixture forms crumbs. Slowly add the water until a ball of pastry miraculously appears — you may not need all the water. Wrap the pasty in clingfilm and leave it to chill in the fridge for an hour.

•To prepare the Cornish pasty filling: Preheat the oven to 180°C (gas mark 4). Roll out the pastry to the thickness you like, but be careful not to tear it. Using a dinner plate as a template, cut out 6 discs of pastry.

•Season the vegetables separately with salt and black pepper. Put the beef into a bowl and mix with the flour and some salt and pepper. Place some potatoes, swede, onions and beef on one half of the circle, leaving a gap around the edge. Dot with butter. Brush around the perimeter of the pastry circle with the beaten egg, then fold the pastry over the vegetables and meat and seal firmly. Starting at one side, crimp the edges over to form a sealed D-shaped pasty. Brush the whole pasty with beaten egg, then make a steam hole in the center with a sharp knife.

•Repeat to make the other pasties. Put the pasties in the oven and cook for 50 mins until they are crispy and golden and the filling is cooked through. Leave them to rest for 5-10 mins before eating.

Find the full recipe here.

3.      Battenberg cake

Battenberg cake is my favorite tea time snack/dessert. It’s one of those foods you have a specific way of eating; I like to peel off the marzipan ‘crust,’ tear apart the four little blocks of cake, and eat each part individually in order to draw out the experience. It’s super sweet and you can’t eat much of the cake at once, but that just makes it all the more satisfying, in my opinion.

Balanced out with a glass of cold cider, Battenberg cake makes for a tasty treat that just thinking about fills me with nostalgia for dinner at grandma’s house.

Battenberg cake.
bbcgoodfood.com

•Heat oven to 350F and line the base and sides of a 20cm square tin with baking parchment (the easiest way is to cross 2 x 20cm-long strips over the base). To make the almond sponge, put the butter, sugar, flour, ground almonds, baking powder, eggs, vanilla, and almond extract in a large bowl. Beat with an electric whisk until the mix comes together smoothly. Scrape into the tin, spreading to the corners, and bake for 25-30 mins — when you poke in a skewer, it should come out clean. Cool in the tin for 10 mins, then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling while you make the second sponge.

•For the pink sponge, line the tin as above. Mix all the ingredients together as above, but don’t add the almond extract. Fold in some pink food coloring. Then scrape it all into the tin and bake as before. Cool.

•To assemble, heat the jam in a small pan until runny, then sieve. Barely trim two opposite edges from the almond sponge, then well trim a third edge. Roughly measure the height of the sponge, then cutting from the well-trimmed edge, use a ruler to help you cut 4 slices each the same width as the sponge height. Discard or nibble leftover sponge. Repeat with pink cake.

•Take 2 x almond slices and 2 x pink slices and trim so they are all the same length. Roll out one marzipan block on a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar to just over 20cm wide, then keep rolling length-ways until the marzipan is roughly 0.5cm thick. Brush with apricot jam, then lay a pink and an almond slice side by side at one end of the marzipan, brushing jam in between to stick sponges, and leaving 4cm clear marzipan at the end. Brush more jam on top of the sponges, then sandwich remaining 2 slices on top, alternating colors to give a checkerboard effect. Trim the marzipan to the length of the cakes.

•Carefully lift up the marzipan and smooth over the cake with your hands, but leave a small marzipan fold along the bottom edge before you stick it to the first side. Trim opposite side to match size of fold, then crimp edges using fingers and thumb (or, more simply, press with prongs of fork). If you like, mark the 10 slices using the prongs of a fork.

The cake is great with a cup of tea or a glass of milk.

Find the full recipe here.

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Just writing this article made me consider begging my parents to take me with them when they fly to England next month. Next week comes the final part, with recipes dictated to me by my family, and a glimpse into some of the baking I have childhood memories of.

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