Of the candidates, I quite like afternoontea.co.uk, because of the variety of venues, as well as the descriptions for each including times, booking info, menu, etc… There definitely could be more of a selection of tea rooms for some areas, including the South West, which only lists a few hotels. Nonetheless, many visitors will not wander farther than London, where the afternoontea.co.uk website has many locations from which to choose. Among the most popular choices are the Ritz Hotel, the Dorchester, the Goring, Harrods and Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park.

The United Kingdom Tea Council website has too much hype, but it is helpful, especially with their reveiws of tea rooms as part of the annual Tea Guild’s Top London Afternoon Tea Award and their Tea Guild’s Top Tea Places list.
photo credit: imagesniper

Cream Scones

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled
• 1 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 425°F or 200°C. Mix dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, sugar and salt) until combined. Cut butter into small cubes. Mix butter into dry ingredients using pastry blender, fork or fingers, until mixture resembles coarse meal with few butter clumps. Stir in heavy cream until dough begins to form. Transfer dough to a floured surface for further kneading before rolling out the dough to about ¾-inch thickness or 2 cm. Cut pieces using a biscuit cutter or a pleasing sized glass. Place rounds on an ungreased baking sheet and bake until lightly browned on top: 12 to 15 minutes. Cool on wire rack for 10 minutes.

Variations include substituting part of the heavy cream/butter with clotted cream for added richness, or mixing in some cranberries or currants before stirring in the cream. If you want a more versatile scone for both sweet and savory purposes, then you can easily reduce the sugar for a neutral taste.

For a review of this recipe and an eloquent search for the perfect scone, see Smitten Kitchen‘s food blog on the subject: dream a little dream of scone.

The Brendon House tea rooms have twice won the North Devon Cream Tea award.

Brendon House’s Isobel Rigby explains how it is done in this excerpt from Sue Milne’s article in The Australian:

“The flour, eggs, milk and butter for the scones, the jam and cream are all sourced locally, says Isobel, who spends hours every day baking a mini-mountain of scones in the kitchen’s oil-fired range. ‘The ingredients are simple but they must be good quality. Our scones are nothing like the ones you buy in a shop and it’s because they are tasty and we are generous with the cream and jam that we’ve been awarded top cream tea twice in the last few years,’ she says.”

Isobel goes on to explain the traditional way to enjoy a Devonshire cream tea:

“Split the scone, no butter, cover each half thickly with cream, then add a teaspoon of strawberry jam on each side, and enjoy.”

Making clotted cream is traditionally a long, slow process. For those interested in obtaining clotted cream the hard way, I found this recipe in the book Food in England, by Dorothy Hartley.

“Take the night’s milk and put it into a broad earthenware pan and in the morning set over a slow fire, letting it stand there from morning till night, suffering it not to boil, only heat.
“Then take off the fire and set in some place to cool all night and next morning dish off your cream and it will be very thick.”

A similar recipe from a genuine Cornish woman, Connie, is more detailed, and has answers to comments as well. Her recipe and the one above would be made using unpasteurised, whole milk, of course. I can’t really recommend you try this, as I don’t think consuming unpasteurised products is a good idea, especially for pregnant women. Also, it instructs the reader to leave the milk out overnight, which other receipes include as a step prior to heating, neither of which sound very safe with dairy products. I would rather leave it to companies with adequate quality assurance departments.

A more modern recipe which sounds a bit more sanitary can be found on cooksrecipes.com, and although the author thinks that devonshire cream is synonymous with clotted cream, the formula provided just might work.

There are many recipes for fake clotted cream, which may pass for someone who’s never tried the real thing. I found one such recipe online at joyofbaking.com, but given that Ms Jaworski’s dairy descriptions are quite erroneous, I wouldn’t trust her culinary advice. A recipe using whipping cream, marscapone, sugar and vanilla surely has no place near a description of neither clotted nor devonshire cream. I am quite certain that the resulting concoction would go quite nicely on fresh fruit or baked desserts, but I will be keeping it away from my scone, thank you.

Other mock clotted creams include sugar, maybe to satisfy the American addiction to the refined white stuff, but it is redundant here. Also, sour cream can in no way imitate clotted cream, so stay away from recipes that suggest using it.

Dairy substitutes

If you find yourself  short of dairy products, here is an interesting substitute for milk and cream from the book “English 18th Century Cookery:”

“Beat up the whole of a fresh egg, in a basin, and then pour boiling tea over it gradually, to prevent its curdling. Its is difficult from the taste to distinguish the composition from rich cream.”

I have to admit, I haven’t tried this one myself, but I can’t imagine that this recipe will produce anything other than tea-flavoured egg.

Some examples of such perceptions can be found in “English 18th Century Cookery.”

“TEA: By some, the use of this exotic is condemned in terms the most vehement and unqualified, while others have either asserted its innocence, or gone so far as to ascribe to it salubrious, and even extraordinary virtues. The truth seems to lie between these extremes: there is however an essential difference in the effects of green tea and of black, or bohea; the former of which is much more apt to affect the nerves of the stomach than the latter, more especially when drank without cream, and likewise without bread and butter.

There we have a recommendation from our 18th Century forbears. Tea, especially green tea, affects the stomach. Take it with cream, and bread and butter, to ameliorate the affect.

“That, taken in a large quantity, or at a later hour then usual, tea often produces watchfulness, is a point that cannot be denied; but if used in moderation, and accompanied with the additions just now mentioned, it does not sensibly discover any hurtful effects, but greatly relieves an oppression of the stomach and abates a pain of the head. It ought always to be made of a moderate degree of strength: for if too weak it certainly relaxes the stomach.”

“Tea often produces wakefulness.” Too true; for that, we have the caffeine to thank. “Abates a pain of the head;” no doubt, if the headache is from caffeine withdrawal.