Tea Time Treats

People often wonder why the food we make is often so very British. Around the time I met my husband in the late 1990s, I worked at a tearoom called the Porcelain Teacup in Mount Vernon, Iowa. We served lunch and afternoon tea mostly to faculty at Cornell College. 

Professor Stephen Lacey held court there most afternoons and we all looked the other way while he poured whatever he kept in that flask in his teapot, because he told such wonderful stories. I credit Professor Lacey as being the first person to really bring the early modern era alive for me.

The owner of the tearoom, Gina had had started the tearoom for her mother who couldn’t stand American scones. Lemon curd and sweet scones were without a doubt our biggest sellers. I made at least a ton of lemon curd there and developed a lifelong appreciation for the food of my people.

Steve’s grandmother immigrated here from the UK where her mother had worked as a baker, and he grew up eating from her cookbook. He was really into the fact that there was someone else around who knew about some of the odd foods he liked. It’s one of the things we had in common that drew us together.

The store had organic lemons at a really good price when I was there today, so we bought up a bunch and I am making a batch of lemon curd. Since I am sure you don’t want to make the size batch I normally make, I have cut this recipe in half for you. If you do decide to double it, I suggest using the peels for a nice batch of limoncello.

Lemon Curd

Ingredients
4 Lemons – room temperature
1 3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups butter
4 eggs beaten

Directions

1. Zest one of the lemons and then juice them all. 4 lemons at room temperature should yield about 3/4 cup juice.
2. Pour juice over zest in a heavy bottomed pan or a double boiler and stir in sugar.
3. Heat it until the sugar dissolves. 
4. Cut butter into small pieces and add to other ingredients.  This will cool the mixture enough to add the eggs.
5. When the butter has melted stir a bit of the hot mixture into eggs and whisk well. This is called tempering the eggs. You are warming them up a bit, so they don’t cook when you combine them with the sugar and juice.
6. Add this mixture to the ingredients in the saucepan, while whisking. 
7. Keep stirring the mixture until it thickens enough to leave a trace on the surface of the curd.
8. If the mixture gets a little lumpy, don’t despair just put it in a blender and mix it until smooth or put it through a sieve.

After you make it a few times, you will get the hang of thickening custards this way.  This is the way all curds are made you just change up the type of fruit you are using.  Raspberry and cranberry curd are also particularly good. You can follow the instructions here on how to can the curd but don’t use the recipe. It’s awful. It has far too many eggs and you can taste it. Delia says four too in case you need an expert opinion.

Now that you have your curd made, we can move on to the scones.

Sweet Cream Scones

Ingredients
2 cups of flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 428°F (220°C).
2. Cut butter into dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.  
3. Mix wet ingredients and stir into the dry ingredients.  
4. Take dough out of the bowl and pat it into a large circle on your baking sheet.
5. Cut into wedges scooting them just far enough apart that they don’t touch.
6. Sprinkle with a tiny bit of caster sugar.
7. Bake until the internal temperature reaches 200 degrees.

There you almost have the makings of a perfectly proper British tea.  Soon I will have to teach you to make clotted cream, but that’s for another day.