How not to cook a Yorkshire Pudding

Today’s ramblings are about some real experimentation. I made some steak and kidney stew on Tuesday and I decided that it would be a stew on Wednesday with Yorkshire puddings and vegetables. 

Then on Thursday it would be transformed into a streak and kidney pie. The problem was that I hadn’t remembered to buy some plain flour. I know from past experience that you can’t make Yorkshire puddings from self raising flour. My recipe for four small puddings is as follows

50gms Plain flour

1 medium egg (organic free range)

Pinch of salt

150mls milk

Pre heat the oven to 180C. Whisk the egg and flour together with about 1/3 of the milk. Mix to a smooth paste. Add the rest of the milk and whisk until it is all combined to the consistency of single cream.

Put a drop of oil, something like sunflower, groundnut not olive oil, into four holes of a muffin tin. Heat the oil over a gas ring until it smokes. Health and Safety Police alert – be careful! Turn the gas off and add about three tablespoons of the Yorkshire mix into each of the holes. There is not quite enough mixture for exactly three in each, so do two and a nearly whole spoonful to get it equal.

Cook for approximately 25 minutes. Under no circumstances, with the exception of an explosion from within the oven, open the door in the first 20 minutes. If you do they will not rise.

Now this is my usual recipe but as I have said I didn’t buy any plain flour. I only had 30 grams. The only other plain flour I had was stone-ground wholemeal. It’ll be ok I thought. As well as this I didn’t have any milk. Now whilst I didn’t know whether the wholemeal flour would work I do know that some people use half water and half milk or all water instead of all milk. I believe what happened was the result of the flour rather than the water. They tasted fine. The only problem was that they didn’t rise. Have a look at the results it easier to show you than to explain.