Toad in the hole (Mary Berry) (2024)

FAQs

Why didn't my toad in the hole rise? ›

Getting your Yorkshires to rise:

Toad in the Hole needs a hot dish with plenty of oil. Using a metal baking tin and adding the batter quickly is recommended. Also, the dish needs to be large enough so that the batter can creep around the edges (at least 30cm x 25cm ideally).

'Toad in the hole' is just a quaint little nickname given to sausages in batter - or Yorkshire pudding, as we proudly call it in the U.K. The origins of the name are shrouded in mystery, but seem to date from the 18th century, when you can find references to 'pigeons in a hole' in old recipe books.

There are a few things that will make your batter soggy and stop it from rising nicely. You need to make sure your batter is a good consistency – not too thick and not too thin. This recipe seems to work nicely for us. If your batter still isn't rising well it could be that you haven't used enough oil.

If your toad in the hole is soggy, it might be due to there being too many sausages in the tin. Try to make sure they're spaced far apart from each other to allow the batter to get crisp. Also, to make sure the Yorkshire pudding rises, don't be tempted to open the oven as it's cooking.

What consistency should Yorkshire pudding mix be? For perfect Yorkies, you need a consistency of heavy cream, so really quite runny but not milk-runny. To make sure you achieve this I suggest pouring half of the liquid in and then slowly adding more until you reach the consistency.

The heat distribution in your oven may be uneven. I have an old oven and my dishes would burn, stick, and undercook until I started using a few tricks (self citation, beware). The main idea is to put a shield (an empty baking dish) between the heat source (the bottom of the oven) and the dish you are baking.

Egg in a Basket features an egg fried in the hole of a buttery slice of bread. The dish goes by several other names as well; Americans sometimes call it Toad in the Hole, but that title more properly refers to the traditional English dish of Yorkshire pudding with sausage and onion gravy.

It has been suggested the pudding was given the name “Yorkshire” due to the region's association with coal and the high temperatures this produced that helped to make crispy batter.

Despite popular belief, there is no record of the dish ever being made with toad. The origin of the name is unclear, but it may refer to the way toads wait for their prey in their burrows, with their heads poking out, just as sausages peep through the batter.

Resting the batter really does result in better-risen Yorkshire puddings with an airier texture (rather than chewy). About an hour is sufficient to allow the starch molecules to swell, giving a thicker consistency, and for the gluten to relax.

What do you eat toad in the hole with? ›

Toad in the hole is traditionally served with onion gravy. Starting with sautéed onion goes a long way to make the gravy tastier when you don't have a pan of roast meat drippings or a homemade beef stock! Beef drippings or butter – Beef drippings will give your gravy the best flavour but butter makes a fine substitute.

What is the best baking tin for toad in the hole? A metal tin with fairly high sides is best because metal is a very efficient conductor of heat and getting the batter hot is essential for a good rise.

Sausage temps for toad in the hole

To get sausage that is safe to eat, it must be cooked to 160°F (71°C), so you'll need to check the doneness with your Thermapen^® ONE before you remove your dish from the oven.

Make sure the the fat is really hot before you add the batter. Really, really hot oil. It has to be smoking as you pour the batter in. Don't, under any circ*mstances open the oven door during cooking or they will sink.

Once you've put it out, ideally you should eat it within 4 hours. If you allow any leftovers to cool, make sure to refrigerate in a container with a lid and chill. You can keep leftovers of Toad in the Hole in the fridge for approximately 3 days or so.

Be careful with the cake batter. We advise folding the ingredients together, not beating them, as this will keep the mixture aerated. Check your oven is at the correct temperature. If it is too hot, the cake doesn't have time to rise, and if it is too cold it will rise too high and then sink at the end.

Keep Batter Cool and Oven Hot

A successful rise will come from the combination of a cold batter going into a very hot oven. The oven should be as hot as possible—the highest setting your oven can handle (450 F to 500 F) without burning everything to a crisp.

The fat isn't hot enough (it should be smoking hot). The oven isn't getting hot enough (needs to maintain a 220C/425F temperature). Your oven loses heat too quickly when you open the oven door and/or you leave the oven door open for too long whilst you're filling up the Yorkshire pudding tins with batter.

If your kitchen as well as the counter where you work the mixture is cool, the batter will chill off additionally (regardless of whether you utilized warm water to make it). Assuming that your batter is kept at around 80°F, it ought to require somewhere in the range of 1 and 1½ hours to rise twofold in volume.