So I was flipping through one of my oldest cookbooks, and stumbled upon a recipe for “Swiss crumpets” and was totally intrigued. I’ve never heard of them, but reading the recipe reminded me a little of a cookie thing I had as a little girl at Christmas time – a delicate, thin, fried dough with powdered sugar. It turns out, they have zero resemblance to British crumpets.
As with many old recipes, the instructions were very…short. “Mix to a stiff dough, take 1/4 of the dough and roll as thin as possible. Let stand/dry for 10 minutes, then stretch as thin as paper and tear off in uneven pieces and fry in deep fat to a delicate golden brown. Dust with powdered sugar.” No temperature on the oil (yeah, I used oil rather than lard), no times, although color is a good indicator…but my husband just stared at me and said, “What exactly is a ‘delicate golden brown’??” My best guess was a lighter, rather than darker brown for frying.
The stretching part was kind of fun, and even though holes developed, because the dough was supposed to be torn anyway, it was a no-sweat kind of thing. Hole appear? Make it part of the tear for a piece! We quickly discovered that the pieces needed to be a little smaller, simply to keep everything cooking evenly. Also, we only did half of the dough. This one recipe makes a ridiculous number of Swiss crumpets. We filled two large bags with them, and called it quits in exhaustion. Of course we both tried them, and yum. Seriously, it’s a simple dough, nothing outstanding or bold flavor-wise, but it is the very mild flavor with the lovely sweetness from the powdered sugar that makes these Swiss crumpets special.
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