Sweets for Dainty Fingers

Perhaps next to the cup of good tea, the guests look forward to the cake and desserts on that top tier of the serving tray.  If you are planning to bake for our Afternoon Tea, consider making sponge cake or pound cake.  As a final course, each guest will be served a thin slice of cake to eat with other desserts.

If you like to express your artistic inclinations through baking, consider making petits fours like macarons and meringues, or iced ones like eclairs and layered cakes to complete the dessert tray.  At oldfashionedliving.com, you'll find tidbits on tea time traditions and cake recipes from scratch.

For the adventurous bakers out there, try making a Battenburg Cake with its distinctive two-by-two check pattern.  That would give any Afternoon Tea a British touch.

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Scones: the Second Course

Commonly eaten with jam and clotted cream, the scone is a small British quick bread, usually made of wheat, barley or oatmeal with baking powder as a leavening agent.  A simple scone recipe can be the beginning of a variety of flavors that will add much to your Afternoon Tea.  USA Weekend columnist, Pam Anderson shared at allrecipes.com one that asked for raisins but which could be changed into cranberry-orange, lemon-blueberry, or cherry-almond with a few ingredient exchanges.  Try it!

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, frozen
• 1/2 cup raisins (or dried currants)
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 large egg

Directions

1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. In a medium bowl, mix flour, 1/3 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Grate butter into flour mixture on the large holes of a box grater; use your fingers to work in butter (mixture should resemble coarse meal), then stir in raisins.
3. In a small bowl, whisk sour cream and egg until smooth.
4. Using a fork, stir sour cream mixture into flour mixture until large dough clumps form. Use your hands to press the dough against the bowl into a ball. (The dough will be sticky in places, and there may not seem to be enough liquid at first, but as you press, the dough will come together.)
5. Place on a lightly floured surface and pat into a 7- to 8-inch circle about 3/4-inch thick. Sprinkle with remaining 1 tsp. of sugar. Use a sharp knife to cut into 8 triangles; place on a cookie sheet (preferably lined with parchment paper), about 1 inch apart. Bake until golden, about 15 to 17 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes and serve warm or at room temperature.

Footnotes

• Cranberry-Orange Scones
• Follow the recipe for Simple Scones, adding a generous teaspoon of finely grated orange rind (zest) to the dry ingredients and substituting dried cranberries for the raisins.
• Lemon-Blueberry Scones
• Follow the recipe for Simple Scones, adding a generous teaspoon of finely grated lemon rind (zest) to the dry ingredients and substituting dried blueberries for the raisins.
• Cherry-Almond Scones
• Follow the recipe for Simple Scones, adding 1/2 tsp. almond extract to the sour cream mixture and substituting dried cherries for the raisins.
• Copyright 2006 USA WEEKEND and columnist Pam Anderson. All rights reserved.

Clotted Cream Makes a Tea

Scones and strawberry jam for Afternoon Tea seems to be incomplete without clotted cream.  It has such a rich and tasty history; according to wikipedia --

Clotted cream (sometimes called clouted cream or Devonshire cream) is a thick cream made by indirectly heating full-cream cow's milk using steam or a water bath and then leaving it in shallow pans to cool slowly. During this time, the cream content rises to the surface and forms 'clots' or 'clouts'. It forms an essential part of a cream tea.

There are many make-your-own recipes to be found online, with as many commenters that dispute the resulting taste from such trials.  The website europeancuisines.com offers a simple (two ingredients: fresh milk and heavy cream) though time-consuming (24 hours to sit, 1.5 ++ hours to cook) recipe that should taste like the real thing.  Even if you're not planning to make your own, the article linked above still makes for an informative and entertaining read.

Another recipe comes from Sustainable Table, and also takes a long while (8-10 hours in the oven, then refrigerate overnight) but won't require you to watch a pot nor fiddle with water temperatures in a double boiler.

For the rest of us, there's Amazon and 6 oz bottles of English Clotted Cream that comes 2 per pack for $12.60 plus shipping.

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Savory Tea Sandwich Recipes

First course of a traditional Afternoon Tea is the savory sandwiches.  These are generally small, crustless tasty sandwiches.  Forego the cookie cutters because that wastes a lot of bread.  Cut a regular-sized sandwich into 4 squares or triangles, and voila!  You have your Afternoon Tea off to a great start.

Here are a few links to recipes for savory sandwiches:

• cucumber
• smoked salmon
• chicken salad
• egg salad
• ham and cheese

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