There's nothing as good as an old-fashioned cream tea in a little tea shop in the south of England. Unfortunately in Calgary there are no such places so I decided to recreate my own version for my family.
Clotted Cream
Ingredients:
- 2 cups of the highest percentage fat whipping cream you can find. It's normally 33 to 36%.
Method:
Put the cream in a glass dish - I used an 8" x 8" cake pan.
Pre-heat your oven to 180F.
Put the cream on the middle shelf and leave it for 12 hours. I did this overnight.
After 12 hours CAREFULLY remove from the oven so you don't disturb the clotted layer of cream. Leave to cool COMPLETELY.
When the cream is completely cool, cover in foil and refrigerate for 8 hours.
After 8 hours remove from the fridge and carefully skim the clotted cream away from the watery cream underneath.
Put the clotted cream into a jar and keep refrigerated. This should keep for at least a week.
Scones
This is my favourite recipe for fruit scones adapted for Canada from Mary Berry's original, but I'm sure that my Mum's recipe was very similar.
Ingredients:
- 2 1/2oz / 75g Salted butter, direct from the fridge, cut into cubes
- 12oz / 350g All purpose (plain) flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons Baking powder
- 1oz / 30g Super-fine (caster) sugar
- 2 1/2oz / 75g Thompson raisins (or dried fruit of your choice)
- About 5 fl oz / 150ml Cold milk
- 2 Large eggs, beaten
Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 425F/220C/Gas mark 7.
Lightly grease a large baking sheet.
Put the flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Add the cubes of butter. Rub in lightly and quickly until the mixture loks like fine breadcrumbs.
Add the sugar and dried fruit.
Pour 3 1/2 fl oz or 100ml of the milk, and all but 2 tablespons of the beaten egg into the mixture.
Mix together with a round-bladed knife - I use a palette knife - until you make a dough. You can add a little more milk if you feel the dough is too dry.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly-floured work surface.
Lightly knead just a few times until the dough is fully gathered, then gently roll and pat until the dough is 3/4" or 2cm thick. DO NOT USE A ROLLING PIN - or your scones won't rise!
Using a 2 1/2" or 6cm cutter, cut as many scones out as you can from the dough.
Place the scones on the baking sheet, spaced slightly apart.
Gather the trimmings together and pat them with your hands to 3/4" or 2cm thick and cut out more scones. Repeat this until you can't cut out any more scones.
Brush the tops of the scones with the reserved egg.
Put the scones in the oven and bake for around ten minutes, or until they have risen and are a nice brown colour.
Remove the scones from the oven and cool them on a wire rack.
Be patient and let the scones cool, and serve them with strawberry jam and home-made clotted cream.
