Cream teas and cakes! (Part I)

Hi everyone!

Here's my next instalment about Exmoor and the West Country. The West Country is an informal name for the south west of England. The West Country
It's a very popular destination for holidaymakers and one of the things it is famous for is cream teas.

So what is a cream tea? Well a cream tea usually consists of one or two scones, clotted cream, jam...and of course a pot of tea. Let's start with scones. Well the first thing you need to know is that there are always arguments about how you actually pronounce the word "scone". Some people pronounce it so that it rhymes with "John" and "gone". Other people (like me) pronounce it so that it rhymes with "moan" and "loan". I've just done a quick straw poll around the office and discovered that only 21% of the people working in BBC Learning English agreed with my pronunciation. Oh dear. And while I'm on the subject of confusing words, let me confuse you even more. British scones are not the same thing as American scones. Americans call British scones "biscuits"....and what the British call biscuits, the Americans call "cookies"! Confused? Anyway, back to British scones. Scones can be either sweet or savoury - but in a cream tea, they are always sweet (can you imagine eating a savoury scone with jam and cream?? Actually, I bet Ana Paula would enjoy it ;-)). They are made with flour, fat, milk, sugar and salt and baked in an oven. They are round in shape and measure about 4.5 cm across (but they do come in all different shapes and sizes! The world's biggest scone). I've put the recipe for scones at the end of the blog.




Next, let me tell you about clotted cream. It's a thick cream (almost like soft butter) that is usually associated with the West Country. It's made by heating normal cream so that some of the liquid evaporates. It's a pale yellow colour, with a dark yellow crust on top. It's very rich and you wouldn't want to eat it every day.

Finally, there's the jam. This really should be strawberry jam, with big pieces of strawberry in the jam. Raspberry jam is also acceptable....just!

So if you've got all of these things, all you need to do is cut the scone in half and you ready to go, right? Wrong! Now we come the biggest controversy of all..... do you put the jam on first and then top it with clotted cream? Or do you spread the clotted cream on like butter and put the jam on top? Well personally, I spread the cream on first and then put the jam on top......but as I am in the minority about the pronunciation of scone, perhaps I'm wrong about this too (but I don't think I am!).

Anyway, I'm going to sign off now.....but I'll be letting you know about tea and cakes soon......

Carrie

holidaymakers: people who go on holiday
straw poll: to unofficially ask a group of people their opinion on something
crust: the hard upper layer of something. The crust on a loaf is the hard, crisp outside part of it. The crust on clotted cream is quite soft though!

Recipe for scones

Ingredients
225g self raising flour (this is white flour that already contains a raising agent: if you can't find self raising flour, you can use all purpose or plain flour and add 2 teaspoons of baking powder (baking soda))
40g butter cut in to small pieces
25g sugar
150ml milk

Method
1. Heat the oven to 220C/425F/Gas 7.
2. Rub a thin layer of butter over a baking sheet. (A baking sheet is a flat piece of metal: you can see it in the photo below)
3. Put the flour and butter in a bowl and use your fingertips to rub in the butter, so that the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. This has to be done quickly so that the butter doesn't melt.
4. Stir in the sugar and salt.
5. Now use a knife to mix in the milk a little bit at a time.
6. When it is all mixed in, use your hands to knead everything together into a soft dough (if it is dry and crumbly, you can add a little more milk.)
7. Put the dough on to a floured surface and use a rolling pin (also with flour on it) to roll the dough. The dough needs to be about 2cm thick.
8. Use a round 4.5 cm cutter to cut out circles and put them on the baking sheet. Make sure they have plenty of space, as they will spread.
9. Dust the top of each scone with a little flour.
10. You should be able to make about 12 scones with these ingredients
11. Bake on a shelf near the top of the oven for 12-15 minutes. The should be golden brown.
12. Take the scones off the baking sheet and leave them to cool. You should eat the scones as soon as they are cool enough, because scones taste best when they are fresh. If you can't eat them all, then you can freeze them. If you don't have clotted cream, then butter is nice too.