The Impatient Chef and the Quest for a Veddy, Veddy British Cream Tea, Part 4, Putting It All Together

In this final installment of The Impatient Chef’s Veddy, Veddy British Cream Tea we put it all  together.  Baking day came on a Sunday.  It was time to make the scones.  

As I mentioned before I used Mary Berry’s scone recipe.  These scones are light and airy, and flavorful, unlike the wedges of crumbly drywall that are commonly disregarded in American coffee shops.  

Equipment: 

You will need a fluted 5cm/2in cutter.

Ingredients:

• 450g / 1lb self-raising flour (recipe after this recipe)
• 2 level tsp baking powder
• 50g / 1¾ oz caster sugar
• 100g / 3½ oz butter, softened, cut into pieces
• 2 free-range eggs
• a little milk
• handful sultanas (optional)

To Serve:

• Strawberry jam
• Clotted (or Devonshire) cream

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425f (400f convection).  Lightly grease a baking tray (two if they’re smaller).

1. Put the flour, baking powder and sugar in a large bowl. Add the butter and rub in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
2. Crack the eggs into a measuring jug, then add enough milk to make the total liquid 300ml/10fl oz. Stir the egg and milk into the flour – you may not need it all – and mix to a soft, sticky dough. 
3. Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface, knead lightly and work in the sultanas, if using. Roll out to a rectangle about 2cm/¾” thick.  I divided the batter, used sultanas in half of the scones. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Cut into as many rounds as possible with a fluted 5cm/2in cutter and place them on the prepared baking trays. 
5. Brush the tops of the scones with a little extra milk, or any egg and milk left in the jug.
   
6. Bake for 12–15 minutes, or until the scones are well risen and a pale, golden-brown colour. Lift onto a wire rack to cool. Eat as fresh as possible.

To make Self-Raising Flour

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (120g) pastry flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Whisk all of the ingredients together in a bowl; use as directed in your recipe.

Recipe Tips

Once the scones are cool, they can be frozen. To eat, defrost at room temperature and then reheat in a hot oven for 10 minutes. The scone dough should be slightly sticky to give the best results. Don’t over handle the dough or it will be tough and don’t be tempted to roll it out too thinly or you won’t get good deep scones. For larger 5cm/2in scones, bake for 10-12 minutes. 

Let's review.  
Pastry Flour from Bob's Red Mill in Milwaukie, Oregon.  https://www.bobsredmill.com
Jam from the Apple Valley Country Store in Hood River Oregon.  https://applevalleystore.com
Scone Cutters from Kitchen Kaboodle in Portland, Oregon.  https://www.kitchenkaboodle.com
Devonshire Cream from Cost Plus World Markets.  https://www.worldmarket.com
Scone recipe from Mary Berry.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/tea_time_scones_77839
Fortmason Tea from the Death Star.   https://www.amazon.com

Serving

Get your nicest tea pot, and tea cups.  I have found that Goodwill is a good place to find tea cups, just don’t expect complete sets.   The Impatient Chef prefers loose leaf tea.  Brewing tea is an art.  Pay attention to brewing times and temperatures. For Fortmason Tea, brew it just like Earl Grey—boiling water is fine, and steep no longer than 4 minutes.  A tea cozy is also a must.  Some small plates provide a nice place to put the scones.  Butter is optional.  Put the Devonshire Cream and jam into some small dishes.  Split the scones, add the cream and jam, and enjoy!  

But, we're not finished yet.  There is some controversy in Merry Olde England over whether to spread the cream first, or the jam.  Because people are regional and fiercely proud of their traditions (The Impatient Chef remembers Dr. Seuss's "Butter Battle Book", and how it exemplifies the futility of such fierocitude), the cream first or jam first controversy takes up an inordinate amount of bytes of the internet on all places in the .uk section of the https://www.  Being American, The Impatient Chef can do it both ways as whim permits.  You do the same.

The Impatient Chef's Veddy Veddy British Cream Tea, Part 2: The Quest for Scones.

In our last episode, we were on the Quest for Fortmason Tea.  
The next Item on the list for the Cream Tea was flour for the Scones.  We decided to go with Mary Berry’s scone recipe, so we needed to have self-raising flour.  We could have gone to the grocery store down the street, but why do that when we can go to:

BoB's Red Mill

The Impatient Chef gets hungry while shopping, and Bob’s Red Mill has a restaurant in its Whole Grain Store (located near the actual mill in Milwaukie, Oregon).  The restaurant is not a formal affair, in keeping with the general folksy vibe at the store.  You order at the counter, grab your coffee or soft drink from the drinks island, or from the cooler.  You take a number to your table, and the food arrives a short while later.  The food, as one would expect, features Bob’s Red Mill products, as well as local meat and produce.  It’s quality fare. 

Well, at least what I’ve had of it. You see, The Impatient Chef has a weakness for good hamburgers.  So does The Impatient Chef’s wife.  We have eaten there 4 times.  I have had the burger 3 of those, and the Reuben once.  When I got the Reuben, I was seriously considering the burger.  The Reuben, not parenthetically, was excellent as well. 

The Burger Rules!

After the burger, it was time to get the flour.

Choices.

We were after pastry flour, but the question arose of whether to buy whole wheat or white.  White would make the traditional scone of Mary Berry’s recipe.  Whole wheat would make flavorful, but possibly denser scones.  Decisions.  Decisions.  But, being the Solomon of the Shopping Trip, I split the baby, and bought both.

Mary Berry’s recipe also calls for “self-raising flour.”  Being American, I have never used that.  Fine.  I’ll have to make it.  It wasn’t hard.  Recipe courtesy of King Arthur Flour.

Mix the following together:

• 1 cup (120g) All-purpose flour

• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Next for the clotted cream.  

Clotted cream, or Devonshire Cream, is an undoubtably British accouterment known for both its use with scones and jam, and for Rowan Atkinson’s contempt riddled soliloquy in Blackadder (find it, watch it).  Since The Impatient Chef likes to cook from scratch, especially unfamiliar recipes (unless impatience overrides adventuresomeness [bookmark this for later]), making some at home was the first order of business.  I consulted the Oracle at Yahoo for all the world’s wisdom, and came up thus:  

According to Curious Cuisinière’s web site:

“The cream has to be heated slowly for 12 hours, which we find easiest to do overnight. Then it is cooled for another 8 hours (or over the next night).”

So, it was off to Cost Plus World Market, and it’s British food section. Phew!  That was close.  The Impatient Chef is waaaay too impatient for that.  A short shopping trip later, the cream was procured, and only one ingredient remained.  

Coming up next on the Quest for Teat: Kick Out the Jams.  

The Impatient Chef's Veddy Veddy British Cream Tea, Part 1

A Veddy Elegant British tea

A few months ago, in the carefree, short-sleeved summertime, and being wont to do so, my wife and I stopped at a Celtic Festival at a nearby church.  It was a small affair, with a bandstand, rows of benches, and a variety of musical acts, mostly punctuated by bagpipes.  A few booths circled a lightly wooded area where artists, and non-profits sold wares.  Songs were sung, pies were sold, and for a few bucks High Tea, and Cream Tea was poured inside a cafeteria near the bandstand.  

We opted for the less filling, bangerless Cream Tea (a banger is a british sausage), which involves scones, jam, and Devonshire Cream (clotted cream), and tea.  

The tea arrived in a small teapot with elegant cups.  I was a little disappointed to see the the tea was Lipton.  Still, we spread the cream on the scones, and put the jam on top of that (this is the Devon method, as opposed to the Cornwall style, which is cream on top of the jam), and had a lovely British tea experience.  It left us wanting to take it up a notch.  What improvements were needed to make a veddy, veddy British Cream Tea experience?  

What is veddy?  Veddy is the word "very" spoken with an upper crust British accent with one's nose held indeed high.  

Let us start be deconstructing the idea of cream tea.  The cream in the name stands for the clotted cream, which is unpasteurized milk heated over a steam bath for a long time, after which is is allowed to cool slowly, which causes it to clot.  It was probably discovered by accident, like most culinary practices.  The texture is half way between whipped cream, and butter, and the flavor is slightly sweet.  

Scones are light and crumbly breads made with pastry flour, sugar, egg, and milk.  They don’t resemble the American-style wedges of parched cardboard and poppy seeds to which we’ve become accustomed.  They can have raisins, currents, cranberries, or other smallish dried fruits in them.  

Which brings us to tea.  Tea is NOT something that comes in little bags on strings, unless you’re in a big hurry.  If you have time, and a teapot, looseleaf tea is the way to go.  Tea comes in many flavors, and styles.  There is black tea, green tea, white tea, roobios tea, yerba mate, herbal teas, scented teas, tea lattes, and bubble teas.  For British tea, black tea is traditional.  The Impatient Chef’s tea of choice is Earl Gray.  The Earl Grayest of Earl Gray teas comes from a corner shop on London’s Piccadilly called Fortnum & Mason.  It’s called Fortmason Tea.  

Fortmason Tea used to be available in The US more readily.  I was able to pick it up at a local British restaurant whenever I needed it.  Then, sometime in the late 1990’s it disappeared.  Nobody carried it.  I heard something about customs trouble, but nothing definitive.  So, I stopped looking.  When we decided to create for ourselves a Vedy, Vedy British Cream Tea Experience, we also decided to find Fortmason.  

Notes on buying locally:  I always try to purchase locally, preferably made with local ingredients.  Sometimes this is not possible.  As you will see as this quest for tea progresses, some things can be sourced locally.  Not everyone lives in Portland, Oregon, so your mileage may vary, but it’s always good to make the effort.  The bad news is that nobody in the Portland area sells Fortnum & Mason Teas.  We have a saying in my day job, that when something is extremely hard to get, or is no longer produced, it is made of “unobtanium”.  Wanting this to not be the case, The Impatient Chef had to hold his nose, and venture onto the Amazon.com Deathstar.

Success!

Looseleaf tea is procured.  Next on The Impatient Chef, on to Devonshire Cream, and Jam.