It’s become quite rare to enjoy the classic British afternoon tea at home as we tend to go to hotels and tea shops for a great strong cuppa and some even better cakes and scones.
While most public tea sessions I’ve recently had were excellent, I decided to pamper myself and my family a few weekends ago and prepared a handful of recipes for Sunday afternoon.
They went down so well I think I am going to be getting quite a few requests in the future so in case you’re in the same boat I thought I’d share a few of my new tea-time favourites.
Let’s start with something on the savoury side. Scones filled with British cheddar were among the highlights of my recent afternoon tea. It takes around 25 minutes to make them and requires a short list of products you can usually find in your fridges and pantries.
- Firstly, you should place the flour in a bowl and rub all of the butter into it.
- Add oats and cheese while stirring the mixture and finish with adding the milk.
- After bringing everything together to make a soft dough, you should roll it out no thinner than around 2cm.
- Stamp out the dough with a 4cm plain cutter and move it to a baking sheet. You can top the scones with a little more grated cheese at this point to make them even naughtier.
- Get the sheet into a preheated oven (220°C or Gas Mark 7) and bake for 12-15 minutes until the scones rise and become golden.
That’s it – really easy to make, but so delightful!
Now, it’s time for some Custard Kisses – not the type you can find in a shop, but a much more buttery and crumbly variation I found at the Luella’s Bakery blog. They were really simple to make and simply fantastic to taste.
- First up, you’ll need to separate 115g of flour, 25g of custard powder, 15g of icing sugar, 90g of cold unsalted butter and ¼ tsp of vanilla extract for the dough, while the rest will go into the filling.
- Add the first three ingredients into a food processor and pulse to combine them together.
- Then, add the vanilla extract and butter and pulse again for some time.
- After that, you should pour the mixture onto the worktop and knead until it’s solid.
- After wrapping into clingfilm and keeping the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes, you can cut it into any shapes you like – I used a ruler to make nice and even squares.
While the biscuits are in the oven at 180°C or Gas Mark 4 for 9-10 minutes, you can prepare the filling.
- Put the left-over butter (preferably at room temperature) into an electric mixer and beat until it becomes creamy.
- After adding the custard powder and icing sugar, you should beat it again for some time and finish with adding the milk and turning the mixer on once more until the mixture’s all even and creamy.
- Pipe the filling on the cooled down biscuits, sandwich them together into two or three layers, and they’re ready to eat!
While the previous two recipes look quite ordinary, this one is suitable if you’d like your afternoon tea nibbles to stand out with their looks in addition to tasting great. This recipe’s a little trickier to make, but it’s certainly worth a shot – I was lucky and the result was excellent on my first try.
- After separating the egg whites, you’ll need to whisk them in a large bowl until you start noticing soft peaks.
- Continue whisking while adding the icing sugar in around four batches and don’t forget to add some food colouring together with the last of the sugar.
- When the mixture is thick, glossy and light pink in colour, you can gently add in the ground almonds with a large metal spoon. Once it’s done, you should use two spoons or a wide-nozzle piping bag to form around 5cm wide circles on a baking parchment.
You’ll need a few baking sheets to fit all of the mixture, but some of it can always wait until you bake the next batch.
- When the mixture is settled and a skin starts to form (it should take around 10 minutes), pop the baking sheets into a preheated oven (180°C or Gas Mark 4).
- At first, you should leave the oven door slightly open so the steam could come out.
- After that, the biscuits should be baked for around 20-25 minutes until they’re crisp but not browned.
If you have a hard time separating the biscuits from the baking parchment, you can add a few drops of water under the parchment once they’re out of the oven – this should ensure that they’re coming off easily. Once you do that, gently spread 1tsp of raspberry jam and 1tsp of mascarpone on one half and sandwich it together.
The best thing about all of these recipes is that they don’t take the whole day to make them. It means that you can easily prepare several different foods for your afternoon tea in around two hours. Be sure to let me know if you decide to try any of the above or have any tea-time recipes to share in the comments below!