Costume College 2021: Taking Tea – Cream Tea

Currant Scones

If you want to be posh, it’s pronounced to rhyme with ‘gone’, but you’ll be understood if you rhyme it with ‘tone’, which is common in the north of England.  And until recently you wouldn’t have found many miscellaneous varieties.  Plain or with currants is about as wild as British scones used to get.

But nowadays, this basic recipe is perfectly happy to accept almost anything you can think of; treacle, cinnamon, and cherry scones appeared during a recent trip to the British Isles.  I’m particularly fond of finely diced crystallized ginger and some chopped pecans.

Brush the tops with a little more cream, and sprinkle with coarse sugar before baking, if you like.

2 c flour

4 t baking powder

¾ t salt

1/3 c sugar

6 T very cold butter, cut in cubes

¾ c cream

1 egg

½ – ¾ c dried currants

Preheat oven to 375^o F.

In a food processor, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.  Pulse a few times to mix.  Add the butter and quickly pulse to cut into the dry ingredients; you want a mixture that looks like fine breadcrumbs.  Transfer to a bowl.  Mix the cream and egg, and stir into the dry mixture.  Stir in currants.

Turn out on a board and knead lightly two or three times.  Divide dough in half and pat out into two 6-inch circles.  Transfer to a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicon sheet.  Cut each circle into 6 wedges, cutting straight down to the sheet; don’t move the wedges apart, as they’ll rise higher close together.  Bake about 15 minutes or until brown.

Serve with real or mock clotted cream and red fruit jam (red currant, raspberry, strawberry, or mixed fruit) or with cream and golden syrup (which is called ‘thunder and lightning’).

Mock Clotted Cream

Real clotted cream is thick, faintly sour, and very, very rich, and is the centerpiece of cream teas.  It can be purchased in small jars at import stores and over the Internet, but it’s expensive and highly perishable once opened.  It is made by heating unpasteurized milk and cream and then leaving it at low heat in large pans to separate.  The resulting thick cream has so high a fat content that it would qualify as butter in the United States.

This is definitely ‘mock’ clotted cream, although an expat friend said it was the closest she’d ever found in the States.  I recently discovered a recipe for ‘real’ clotted cream at home, though, in a blog by a cook in Newfoundland:  https://www.rockrecipes.com/how-to-make-clotted-cream-for-the-perfect-cream-tea/.

1 c heavy cream

½ c crème fraiche or sour cream

Mix the cream and crème fraiche or sour cream until smooth.  Whip the mixture until very thick and stiff.  Don’t sweeten it!

Strawberries and Sugar

Get the prettiest strawberries you can find, with stems left on if available.  Set out bowls of superfine sugar (‘caster’ sugar; find it in the liquor section – it’s used for mixing cocktails) and finely-sieved brown sugar (or real Demerara sugar, which you can get at import stores or online) to dunk the berries in.

If you’re concerned about ‘double dipping’, make the bowls individual-sized for each guest.

Victoria Sponge

Victoria Sponge is named for Queen Victoria, of course.  Supposedly, it was something she particularly enjoyed with her tea.  It’s also known as Victoria Sandwich, and “the finest of English tea-time cakes”.  It was, therefore, featured for the finale of one season of the Great British Bake Off (shown in the US as the ‘Great British Baking Show’, since Pillsbury owns the American trademark for Bake-Off).  Originally Victoria sponge was simply two layers of cake with jam in between and a sprinkling of caster sugar, but now it often has whipped cream and possibly fresh berries as well.  I’ve seen recipes from Britain using strawberries or raspberries, both, with strawberries perhaps slightly ahead.

But I’ll let Jamie Oliver tell it:  “Sponge cakes are something Britain does so well.  For some reason, when you see a good Victoria sponge, regardless of what’s happening at that moment, you just somehow feel everything’s going to be all right.”

12 tablespoons (170 grams) unsalted butter (1 ½ sticks), softened, and more for greasing pan

1⅓ cups (166 grams) all-purpose flour

3¼ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon kosher salt

¾ cups plus 2 tablespoons (175 grams) granulated sugar

3 large eggs, at room temperature

2 tablespoons whole milk

½ cup (120 milliliters) raspberry jam, more to taste

Powdered sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350^o F. Grease two 8-inch round cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper.

Stir together flour, baking powder and salt.

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.  Beat in eggs, one at a time, then beat in milk, scraping down sides of the bowl as necessary.  Stir in flour mixture.  Pour evenly into prepared pans; smooth the tops.

Bake cakes until golden brown and springy, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes.  Let cool for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely, flat side down.

Trim one cake layer, if needed, to be flat on top.  Place it on a serving platter, and spread jam evenly over it.  Top with remaining cake.  Dust with powdered sugar and serve.

You can get as fancy or crazy as you like with this.  Spread a layer of whipped cream on top of, or under, the jam before adding the second layer, with fresh berries standing in the cream so they look pretty when the cake is cut, or pile berries on top of the whole thing and garnish with more cream and some mint leaves.  British bakers now also sometimes use other flavors of jam, lemon curd, or wildly creative fillings flavored with herbs, spices, and exotic fruit.

Eton Mess

Eton Mess isn’t traditional for cream teas, but it’s one of those recipes every cook should have in their hip pocket for emergencies.  It’s amazingly easy (unless you’re someone who insists on making your own meringues, and not so terrible even if you are, but then you do have to plan further ahead), and looks incredibly fancy, tastes delightful, and can be modified more or less ad infinitum based on the available fruit and the particular occasion.  It also holds long enough in the refrigerator that you can fix it even before you start the main meal, and know your Big Finish is ready and waiting even if everything else is the usual mad panic…

I’ve used Eton mess as a dessert for a formal dinner, served it at ladies’ luncheons and teas; made it with tropical fruit, piloncillo (Mexican raw sugar), vanilla, and a sprinkle of toasted almonds or coconut after a Mexican meal; even had it for both Super Bowl™ and Oscar™ night parties.  And I’ve served it in everything from cut-crystal flutes to giant martini glasses to clear plastic disposable drinking glasses.

I like to layer the fruit, cream and meringues, rather like a parfait; if you do that, you want a clear container that will show off the layers.  Personally, I think it works best as individual servings, not a single large dish, and a mint-leaf garnish is nearly always nice (unless you use a football-shaped cookie for that Big Game…)

If I were British, I probably wouldn’t feel this way about it, and I probably would restrict myself to berries.  Eton is, of course, the British private boarding school (what the British call a ‘public’ school; not at all what Americans mean by that term), the one that all the toffs went to (unless they went to Harrow…).  The ‘mess’ part comes from the same root as ‘mess hall’ (as in army…) referring to ‘a dish of food’, not to the way it looks.  It’s traditionally served (made with strawberries) during the interval (~= American ‘half-time’) at the annual Eton-Harrow cricket match – you can’t get much more British than that!  It is, of course, also related to medieval/Renaissance ‘fools’ and to both trifle and pavlova.

3 pints berries, all one kind or mixed (or other fruit; just about anything works unless you’re a purist, from citrus to summer stone fruit to pineapple or mango)

3 T turbinado, Demerara or raw sugar

1 T orange or berry liqueur or spiced rum, optional, depending on your fruit

8 – 9 purchased plain, crisp meringues

1 c heavy whipping cream, very cold

¼ c crème fraiche, sour cream, Greek yogurt, or Mexican crema, very cold also

Mint leaves or other garnish, optional

If using strawberries or large fruits, cut them up into bite-sized pieces.  Put all the fruit in a bowl, sprinkle with the sugar (more or less to taste, depending on the precise sweetness of the fruit), and slosh on the liqueur or rum.  Again, you can use a little more or less as suits you, or leave it out entirely if you like.  Stir gently, and set aside until some of the juice comes out of the fruit.

Crumble the meringues into about ¾ inch chunks; the exact size is not critical, but the pieces should be no larger than will sit neatly in a spoon as you eat, nor so small that the texture and crunch is lost in the cream.

Whip the cream with the crème fraiche, sour cream, yogurt, or crema until soft peaks form.  You don’t need It stiff enough to pipe, but you do want it to hold some definition as you scoop it.  (If you don’t mind being non-traditional, you might also fold in some chopped crystallized ginger.)

In your serving glass, layer a little bit of fruit, some of the crumbled meringues, and a dollop of whipped cream.  Repeat the layers as many times as you have ingredients and your glasses will hold, ending with a nice top-knot of cream.  Garnish with a mint leaf, toasted nuts or coconut, or a cookie if desired.