tea and cake
Today I indulged a long-standing request from certain American friends to show them what a 'real English tea-party' is like. So, I gave a tea-party like no-one actually does any more...Since when has anyone in England actually had a tea-party that includes cucumber sandwiches, Victoria sandwich cake and jam tarts? Oh, but it was sooo fun...Yes, three types of sandwiches, scones, and the above-mentioned cake and tarts. I don't think I've eaten a jam tart since I was about five years old. They were good. So retro. So what you made when you had a doll's tea-party as a child.
Altogether the whole affair was like a kid's drawing of a house with a door, three windows, pitched roof and smoke coming out of the chimney - houses don't really look like that, ever, but it's so fun to play dress-up and pretend that's what life is really like. The only gripe I had was that my part of the US of A doesn't sell the kind of bread you really need to make those little sandwiches. But it was really funny to lay out such an absurdly elaborate spread for absolutely no reason and also, now I get to eat cake for breakfast for the next few days. (Which is a habit that reminds me of staying with Daniel in Israel, because for Shabbat breakfast there we always eat cake.)
The only recipe I'm going to write down here is for the scones, because I had to email my mother and ask for her recipe and I know that I have asked her for it in the past at least three times and somehow managed to lose it every time. So, from the horses mouth:
1) 8 oz self raising flour
2) about 2 oz vegetable margarine (which roughly is 2 of our serving spoonful)
3) one big or 2 small nice as possible apples (of course we use ours, but this time I had hard quite nice organic apples which I used) Chop to quite small pieces. I sometimes put them rough chopping the magimix, but yesterday I chopped, thinking that you might not have that sort of equipment.
4) Milk [she actually wrote 'yogurt (I use sheep's one)' which is a sort of weird genetic habit to do with my dairy allergies, but just use milk]
5) pinch of salt and may be a desert spoonful of sugar (I don't use it at all sugar, since we expect to have it with hedgerow jam or whatever)
and 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon
6) sesame seeds
7) handful, I mean palmful currants or raisins or even sultanas if you can't find any other ones or nothing if they are not handy....
start by turning the oven to VERY hot temperature, something like 450/500. This is essential for any scone making, it's got to be very hot.
put 1 in a mixing bowl with pinch of salt (people sieve those to fluff up, if you have a sieve) and cinnamon, add the margarine, rubbing in as you know you do the same way when making crumble top. Then add 3, 7 and about 5 fluid oz or half our mug amount of [milk]. Now, the dough is not very hard at all. kind of soft dough but not runny, you just have to see it is just about handlable, so careful about the water amount.
You sprinkle the flat surface with some flour, and you put out the soft dough on, I think you must have seen me doing, I make a longish log shape, and cut into 2 long things, and cut from the edge one by one and make whatever size you like, Then put them out on oiled (olive oil, margarine) and floured baking tray. Brush them with leftover [milk], or beaten egg, or olive oil (this is for sesame seed to hang on the top) and sprinkle the seed on top. Put them in HOT oven about 10 minutes.
These apple scones are the best thing ever. You will notice that the recipe is a bit japan-ified with the sesame seeds but that makes them really good. Cheese scones are another variation - replace the apple with grated cheese - and smell just amazing when they come out of the oven. They are totally nostalgic of my parents' kitchen in the winter. Sigh.
Tea-parties are fun. I have photos but due to continued absence of digital camera they will be posted later when I get the film developed...
Altogether the whole affair was like a kid's drawing of a house with a door, three windows, pitched roof and smoke coming out of the chimney - houses don't really look like that, ever, but it's so fun to play dress-up and pretend that's what life is really like. The only gripe I had was that my part of the US of A doesn't sell the kind of bread you really need to make those little sandwiches. But it was really funny to lay out such an absurdly elaborate spread for absolutely no reason and also, now I get to eat cake for breakfast for the next few days. (Which is a habit that reminds me of staying with Daniel in Israel, because for Shabbat breakfast there we always eat cake.)
The only recipe I'm going to write down here is for the scones, because I had to email my mother and ask for her recipe and I know that I have asked her for it in the past at least three times and somehow managed to lose it every time. So, from the horses mouth:
1) 8 oz self raising flour
2) about 2 oz vegetable margarine (which roughly is 2 of our serving spoonful)
3) one big or 2 small nice as possible apples (of course we use ours, but this time I had hard quite nice organic apples which I used) Chop to quite small pieces. I sometimes put them rough chopping the magimix, but yesterday I chopped, thinking that you might not have that sort of equipment.
4) Milk [she actually wrote 'yogurt (I use sheep's one)' which is a sort of weird genetic habit to do with my dairy allergies, but just use milk]
5) pinch of salt and may be a desert spoonful of sugar (I don't use it at all sugar, since we expect to have it with hedgerow jam or whatever)
and 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon
6) sesame seeds
7) handful, I mean palmful currants or raisins or even sultanas if you can't find any other ones or nothing if they are not handy....
start by turning the oven to VERY hot temperature, something like 450/500. This is essential for any scone making, it's got to be very hot.
put 1 in a mixing bowl with pinch of salt (people sieve those to fluff up, if you have a sieve) and cinnamon, add the margarine, rubbing in as you know you do the same way when making crumble top. Then add 3, 7 and about 5 fluid oz or half our mug amount of [milk]. Now, the dough is not very hard at all. kind of soft dough but not runny, you just have to see it is just about handlable, so careful about the water amount.
You sprinkle the flat surface with some flour, and you put out the soft dough on, I think you must have seen me doing, I make a longish log shape, and cut into 2 long things, and cut from the edge one by one and make whatever size you like, Then put them out on oiled (olive oil, margarine) and floured baking tray. Brush them with leftover [milk], or beaten egg, or olive oil (this is for sesame seed to hang on the top) and sprinkle the seed on top. Put them in HOT oven about 10 minutes.
These apple scones are the best thing ever. You will notice that the recipe is a bit japan-ified with the sesame seeds but that makes them really good. Cheese scones are another variation - replace the apple with grated cheese - and smell just amazing when they come out of the oven. They are totally nostalgic of my parents' kitchen in the winter. Sigh.
Tea-parties are fun. I have photos but due to continued absence of digital camera they will be posted later when I get the film developed...
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