Emily's Cream Tea

The perfect light meal, any time of year!

I really enjoy tea, both the drink and the semi formal meal by the same name. Living in the States, it's relatively uncommon to be invited to or have an afternoon tea that comes with sandwiches and treats unless we're going out of our way to have a special occasion, but the handful of times I've had opportunity to enjoy high tea, boy, have I enjoyed it.

As it turns out, there's a simpler, more informal version of tea you can enjoy that's known as cream tea, Devonshire tea, Devon cream tea or Cornish cream tea. The tradition's history is a little murky, but it seems to have gotten its start in Devon back in the 1100's with just bread and jam, well before tea had been imported to Britain! Essentially, it's just a scone (or scones) with cream, jam and tea, and it's a nice way to tide yourself over if you've had to skip lunch or are having a late dinner... or if you're just in the mood for some tea and a tasty baked good!

Although this tradition is especially popular in Devon and Cornwall, it's not unusual to hear people talking about a Devonshire tea in the UK or other Commonwealth countries like Australia. It was kind of a dark, moody day, so I decided it seemed like a good day to give this tradition a whirl.

The key component of a cream tea - besides the tea itself - seems to be the scones. I remember the first scone I ever had was actually at American Girl Place, and I hated it. If I recall correctly, they included a blueberry scone as the Josefina component in their original tea way back in 2000, and it was dry, crunchy, and generally unpleasant. I don't know if that's how it always was, but when we were there, it was nasty, and it convinced me for years that I didn't like scones.

At some point, I was probably forced to eat another scone for the sake of being polite or out of desperation for something to eat, and realized hey, these are actually delicious! It was a dangerous discovery, because it's not like I needed another baked good to love and covet. The original scones were from Scotland. Triangular in shape, and virtually indistinguishable from bannock bread, they spread to the rest of Great Britain and eventually spread from there. It wasn't until baking powder became commercially available that the light, fluffy scones we know and love became standard, and interestingly, although American scones can be round or triangular, my girlfriend (who is Australian) looked at me like I was nuts when I said they're not always round, so I guess triangle scones have become less common!

Despite loving scones, I've only ever made them from scratch once before, way back when I first started this blog. I guess the timing just hasn't been on my side when it comes to expanding my horizons with these tasty treats. It can be hard picking a recipe to go with just because of the sheer variety that are out there, but scones for cream tea tend to be pretty basic. Instead of just making a normal, plain scone with no flavoring or fruit inside of it, I decided to make the famous scones from Disney's Grand Floridian Resort and Spa, which were featured in the new edition of the Disney cookbook I picked up in Disneyland a few months ago! You can find the recipe online if you don't have one of the books by Googling "Disney scone recipe".

You start by taking four cups of flour, three tablespoons of baking powder, 1/2 cup of sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt and combining it all in a large bowl. You then cut in two tablespoons each of margarine and shortening until it's nice and mealy. The recipe says you can do this with your fingers, but shortening and margarine are so soft that I prefer to use a pastry cutter so I don't melt them.

Next, you add in three beaten eggs and 1 1/4 cups of milk and mix everything until it's just combined. The dough was super easy to work with, and didn't take much to get everything incorporated in, which is always nice. When dough is more stubborn, I worry I'm going to overwork it!

The final step is to fold in a cup of golden raisins.

The dough gets rolled out on a floured surface and cut with a two inch pastry cutter. I made mine a little smaller because I couldn't find out bigger cutter, but let's just say this recipe made a lot more than the advertised 24 scones!

These bake in the oven at 425 degrees for ten to fifteen minutes, or until they're brown on top. I think mine took closer to 15 minutes to finish, and most of the raisins seemed to ooze out of the bottom.

Still, they came out looking pretty impressive! I couldn't get over how perfect and tall with beautiful cracks some of them got.

Traditionally, you take your scone, split it in half, and smother both sides with clotted cream before adding jam. Clotted cream is difficult to find in the US, so I just whipped up some cream like normal and put it on top. My grandma is a huge fan of clotted cream, and she was the one who recommended I try out this recipe. Apparently the scones at the Grand Floridian are some of her favorite scones she's ever had, and she's a big fan of all things tea.

Making the scones tiny meant they looked pretty nice - if a little large - on Molly's tea set!

While I'm not sure these were my favorite scones I've ever had - it's hard to beat the scones we had at the Boston Tea Party Museum, or the ones my girlfriend made while I was visiting, which you'll be hearing about later - they did taste pretty great. They had a really nice texture and weren't too sweet, which made them a good vehicle for the jam. The recipe was super easy, even if it did leave you with a ridiculous amount of scones to consume, although I suppose that's a pretty good problem to have.

Overall, this was a pretty successful exploration into a custom that kind of went out the window with the Boston Tea Party. I understand why our colonial ancestors rejected tea culture so heavily, but part of me's kind of bummed that we don't indulge in this particular treat more often. Maybe I should just use rainy afternoons as an excuse to stay in and treat myself to a home made scone or two.

It was definitely a fun way to kill some time!