Cream Tea Café

Sue Milne goes in search of perfection, and finds it at Brendon House, on Exmoor.

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.”