Tasty ideas for a grown-up tea party.
I’ve been doing some recipe development work recently and was chuffed when Morrisons got in touch and asked me to think some up for them.
The brief for Grownup Tea Party ideas was one that really tickled my fancy, and I spent a very enjoyable couple of days in the kitchen coming up with recipes, styling them and shooting concept pics for how they could look.
I came up with my five choices just before Christmas, but haven’t been able to post them until the magazine went live this week — so here they are! Starting off with the Lady Grey tea scones with lemony whipped cream.
Adding Lady Grey tealeaves to the dough creates scones that are citrus scented without being too sweet, and if you fancy a more of a hit you can go to up to 70g of Lady Grey tea.
And if you fancy a butchers at the magazine spread, just click here.
For the scones
- 425g self-raising flour
- 150g cold salted butter, cubed
- 2 eggs
- 60ml buttermilk
- 100g caster sugar
- 45g Lady Grey tea granules, taken out of Lady Grey teabags. (For a stronger tea flavour, you could go up to 70g Lady Grey tea)
For the lemon cream
- 300ml whipping cream
- 1 lemon, juice only (use juice from an orange if you prefer)
To serve
- Fresh berries or jam
Method
- Heat the oven to 220°C/200°C Fan/Gas 7 and line a baking sheet with baking paper. Sieve the flour into a large mixing bowl and add the cubed butter. Rub the butter into the flour by hand (try to make sure your hands are cold) until the texture is like breadcrumbs. This will take 5 to 10 minutes.
- In a separate mixing bowl, whisk the eggs and buttermilk, then add the sugar, flour mixture and tea granules, mixing until combined and a dough has formed. It will be quite dark on account of the tea.
- Knock the dough out of the bowl onto a floured worktop and bring it together briefly by hand, then roll it out to about a 2cm thickness. Use a 5cm cutter to cut out as many as you can and lay them on the baking sheet with space between each one. Re-form the leftover dough into a ball, roll out and cut out more scones. Repeat until you’ve used as much of the dough as you can. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, or until golden-brown on the outside.
- Leave the scones to cool on a wire rack. Meanwhile, prepare the cream. Add the whipping cream to a mixing bowl and whip with an electric whisk. Once it starts to thicken, add the lemon juice and continue to whisk until the cream is firm and stable, but still smooth and not overworked. Chill in the fridge until needed.
- To serve, cut the scones in half and add fresh berries and a dollop of cream.