A Spot of Afternoon Tea

If you were dieting to lose weight, what would be one thing most likely to break your resolve? Several people I know say  it would be a bacon sandwich. For me, a proper afternoon tea would be a strong contender.
Even though the weather has been sunny and mild, showing that spring might be ready to creep out from under Mother Nature's winter coat, on Thursday it was snowing and on Friday it was overcast with that biting wind we have had to put up with for weeks now.  With friends due to drop by mid-afternoon, afternoon tea by the fire seemed a great idea.
I love making scones. They were the first thing I entered in the junior cookery section of the local show. I was thrilled to have won first prize and even more so when I heard that the judge had said to the attending steward that had those scones been entered in the open section she would have given them first prize there too. What a boost to my emerging culinary confidence, especially as it was only the second time I had made scones, the first being in a Home Science lesson at school some few weeks earlier. I would like to be able to say it was all onwards and upwards from that day on but I have had some spectacular failures since. I'm not sure how it is possible to stuff up such a simple process but I have proved it possible. So probably the real reason that I love making scones is that I love eating them. I have tried lots of different recipes including Lemonade Scones but this time I decided to try Paul Hollywood's recipe. I have never used strong bread flour for scones before but they turned out a treat. With strawberry jam and clotted cream at the ready, preparations were coming along nicely.
It occurred to me that not everyone has a sweet tooth (how can that be, you may well ask) and I had heard such good things about the savoury cream tea at The Anvil Tearoom that I thought I could try to create my version of that. I began with cheese scones based on a recipe I have used for ages and taken from a booklet from a local flour mill.

Then I thought about what to spread on them. Parsley butter seemed a good idea.

As well as the obvious chopped herbs and butter, I always add a few drops of either Maggi Seasoning or Worcestershire sauce for extra savouriness. Then I thought, what goes better with cheese than a bit of chutney so I made another spread by combining roughly equal quantities of marscapone and tomato chutney.

 So two batches of scones  were cooling on wire racks with only one fairly negligible mishap (see below) and the tray of spreads was ready. .

Clockwise from top slightly left,

• Strawberry Jam
• Clotted cream
• Herb butter
• Chutney cream cheese spread
• Butter (for those who might want the indulgent experience of butter and jam and cream)

HeWhoChopsTheWood made sure the fire was going.

And such a good time was had that I forgot about photographs until it was all over. Eat first then think about photos - I've done this before, haven't I? To be fair I wouldn't have thought dashing about with a camera, worrying about blog pictures was very conducive to being a considerate hostess so I'm not apologising for the lack of a picture of all the scones and tea things lovely though it may well have been. It was wonderful to catch up with friends and enjoy the warmth of the fire in what I hope marks the end of the bitterly cold weather.
Cheese scone recipe and the 'negligible mishap' follow:


Cheese Scones
You will need:

• 225g self-raising flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• pinch salt
• 50g soft butter
• 1 egg, beaten
• 5 tablespoons milk, plus a little extra to glaze
• 80g tangy cheddar finely grated.

Oven temperature 220° C.  
Baking tray or cookie slides lightly greased or lined with baking parchment.
  
You will need to:

1. Preheat the oven and prepare the baking tray.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.
3. Rub the butter into these dry ingredients. 
4. Use a wooden spoon to stir in  the beaten egg,  the milk and about 2/3 of the cheese, stirring until the mixture is blended.
5. Turn the dough onto a floured work surface and knead very lightly.
6. Roll or pat to 1.5cm thick. Use a floured cutter to cut into rounds. 
7.  Brush the tops with milk and sprinkle on the remaining cheese.
8. Bake in the centre of the oven for about 15 minutes.
9. Cool on a wire rack.

 (This recipe is adapted from Baking with Botley Mills by Kate Easlea)
 
 
And what about the so-called negligible mishap?

As I was making these scones I was interrupted and distracted by a phone call and I only noticed the pot of baking powder sitting on the worktop unopened as I was sliding the tray of glazed and topped scones into the oven. Too late to do anything but wait the 15 minutes and see how they would come out,  meanwhile mentally thinking up apologies and practically clearing the way to the dustbin. They were absolutely fine. In this recipe which uses SR flour and a relatively small amount of baking powder the result of not including it was scarcely noticeable. (This would not have been true for the Paul Hollywood recipe!) So no binning or apologies necessary.