Simple Home-baked Scones

 When a few friends came over to visit this weekend, the last thing that I was expecting was for one of my male friends to bring his craving for cream teas all the way over from Hampshire. This is a guy who likes mountain biking and sailing. And fast cars. And shoot-em-up pew-pew-pew computer games. He’s no less macho than your average man and yet he craves little cakes with cups of tea. Not that I’m suggesting anything, of course.

Anyway, a rainy post-mojito Sunday morning dawned and it was clear that no one wanted to leave the warm and dry of our flat in search of tea and cake. Instead, I got out my trusty scone recipe and threw together a batch. They’re so simple to make – preparation takes about 10 minutes or so and they don’t take much longer to bake. Within half an hour, you can be munching on warm scones.

Please don’t bother with the supermarket versions that are available; I’ve always found them to be a tremendous disappointment. Dry, crumbly and tasteless. Homemade scones are amazingly easy and so worthwhile for the flavour alone. Serve with clotted cream and strawberry jam for an authentic feel or go for whipped cream if the divine clotted kind isn't available. Just as lovely with butter, of course, though not quite as decadent. Top with a few British strawberries if you're feeling fancy (or if they were going cheap at the supermarket, like us!)

Sultana Scones
Makes 8 - 10

225g self raising flour
40g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 ½ tbsp caster sugar
Pinch of salt
125ml semi-skimmed milk
50g sultanas

- Preheat oven to 220C
- Sift the flour over the butter in a large mixing bowl. Rub the two ingredients rapidly between your fingers to bring it together, taking care to break down any lumps. The mixture will have an almost sandy texture once you’re done.
- Add the raisins, sugar and salt and stir in with a table knife.
- Pour the milk into the bowl, a little at a time, mixing it in with the knife. The mixture will come together as you add the milk. You might not need to add all of the milk if the pastry is coming together nicely. If it looks a little dry, add a splash more milk.
- Flour a pastry board or (in my case) a clean worktop and roll out with a floured rolling pin. The pastry should be about ¾ inch thick. Cut your desired shapes – I used a floured glass but you can go as wild as you like with your pastry cutters.
- Pop the scones onto a parchment covered baking tray and bake for 12 – 15 minutes until golden brown.
- Allow to cool for a few minutes and serve warm with cream or butter and jam.

Potter's Tea Party

I have been missing Oxford lately. I’m not sure whether it’s the recent warm weather (perfect for lazing around in the Parks or for punting) or the multitude of celebratory post-exam/hand-in Facebook activity that’s got me reminiscing. Despite the stress, my university days were pretty awesome and Oxford is a fantastic city to be a student in.


This weekend, I was handed an excuse (well, two actually) to hop in my battered little car, turn up my music and pay a long overdue visit to the dreaming spires. I had been invited by the lovely Lamadrian of The Sprouting Teapot blog to spend a relaxing afternoon painting pottery and drinking tea. Needless to say, the combination of painting and hot beverages is cloud nine in my book. Shamelessly girlie, I know.

Despite high-hopes for the day, I was truly treated. Homemade chocolate hazelnut éclairs on arrival followed by kumquats (just keep chewing!) dipped in left over melted chocolate. Both were just as delicious as they sound and I’m very inspired by the homemade choux pastry. I will have to give it a go in the near future!

Next, we ambled to St Ebbe's in Headington where the church had been transformed into a pottery studio complete with paints, ceramic pens and plenty of naked crockery crying out to be decorated. Naturally, it wouldn't be a tea party without suitable refreshments and we were spoilt for choice. With ten different types of tea and a whole table laden with sweet goodies, I knew that I was going to be getting my tea and cake quota for the week.
 
For a mere £10, I was presented with a mug, bowl, jug and cake stand to paint with a selection of ceramic paints and pens plus all the homemadecake I could munch. What a lovely way to spend an afternoon!

Volcano Tea and Fire pit Sausages

What better to way to celebrate a birthday than to have a beach picnic? A bit of sand in your sandwiches never hurt anyone but the Birthday Boy had simpler ideas for his festive feast. So we packed up our bags with blankets, bikini’s (In April! Who were we kidding?) and bundles of fire wood and headed to Inch Strand beach.

We set up camp and built a fire pit with rocks and pebbles to fill with dried out seaweed, drift wood and logs from our own stash. With the sun shining, the Birthday Boy installed himself in front of the fire and grilled sausages while everyone else collected pointy sticks (for eating said sausages) and sipped homemade lemonade. When the sausages were declared to be suitably browned, they were spiked with driftwood sticks and dunked into Ballymaloe Country Relish. Delicious!

As more relatives and friends trooped across the sand, cheese on homemade soda bread topped with more Relish was handed out. Now all we needed was a good cup of tea and maybe a slice of cake to round things off.

“Where’s the volcano kettle?” Someone shouted. Volcano kettle!? Had I heard rightly? My hosts produced a stainless steel contraption and proceeded to explain how it worked. Despite its exotic name, the principle is quite simple.

Five Minute Scribble Volcano Kettle

Volcano kettles, sometimes known as Kelly or Storm Kettles, have a central chamber for wood which is lit to boil water in a surrounding chamber. They were first dreamt up by ghillies on the West Coast of Ireland and are ideal for brewing a cuppa on the go. Because the fire chamber is small, you can use twigs, sticks and leaves (or in our case, drift wood and dried out seaweed) to boil your water rather than having the hassle of building a proper fire. The built in spout and attached handles make it easy to pour too. How cool is that?

Teas all round!

Loose Tea or Not Loose Tea....?

One hundred and sixty five MILLION cups of tea are drunk in the UK alone everyday says the UK Tea Council and I would hazard a guess that the majority of those are made with tea bags. They something of a nebulous history but some reports (including this one) claim that an unknown tea exporter from China sent a silk bag of sample tea leaves to New York coffee merchant, Thomas Sullivan in the early 1900's. He unknowingly brewed the tea leaves in the bag and the rest, as they say, is history. Sullivan went on to patent the 'tea bag' in 1904.

Lahloo Tea have kindly sent me a Tovolo Tea Infuser to try out along with their own blend of breakfast tea in an attempt to get me to ditch tea bags for good. I don't drink that much tea compared to a lot of people I know but I savour the cups that I do have. I've only drunk loose leaves in a tea pot and have generally found the whole thing to be a bit of a faff so the elegant Tovolo was a nice change for a single cup.

Hastily removing my treasure from its careful wrapping, I put the kettle on to boil and read the instructions. The Tovolo infuser is made of three parts - a heat-resistant polycarbonate handle, stainless steel perforated infuser and matching polycarbonate stand.  The handle and infuser push together and pull apart for easy filling and Lahloo recommend using one teaspoon of loose leaves per cup which are brewed for three to four minutes.  

The Tovolo doing its stuff

While I was brewing the loose leaves, I also put on a cup of my usual tipple - PG Tip Pyramid bags (our standard on The Boy's insistence). The normal tea did brew darker and had more of a noticable caffeine 'kick' though the loose leaves tasted a lot fresher and had a more complex flavour.

Left - Lahloo loose tea

Right - PG Tips Pyramid Bag

 When it comes to removing the leaves when you've finished brewing, the infuser sits in its stand which adds as a handy drip-catcher. No puddles of tea on the counter top or mad dashes for the bin with your tea bag in hand.



A small thing but Which? found that, though they are accepted by the majority of councils as compostable waste, most tea bags aren't 100% biodegradable. The loose leaves can be infused several times (though I haven't had a chance to test this out yet) before being disposed of and can be composted. It looks like less waste to my untrained eye as well.

You can buy the lovely Tovolo tea infuser from Lahloo tea. It retails at £12.50 and is available in three colours.

Time for Tea!

Tovolo Tea Infuser

I like tea. I like mint tea, fruit tea, Earl (or Lady!) Grey and, of course, bog standard ‘builders’ tea. My fondness has lead me to limit myself to two cups of caffeinated tea a day during the week (irrationally based on a silly article seen in a girlie magazine) and none after 3pm unless it’s a dire emergency as the caffeine stays in your system for up to 7 hours.

My list of rules surrounding beverages might seem strange but I don’t like to rely on caffeine. I have friends and ex-colleagues who must, on pain of death (or something), have a cup of tea/coffee at whatever o’clock or the world ends – to me, this is stranger than my cuppa conventions. I used to have to have a cup of tea in the morning when I was getting up for work but I managed to give it up because I wasn’t comfortable with caffeine being the only reason that I was up and about.

I’ve also found myself becoming picky about the types or flavours of tea that I drink. I’m already pretty fussy about coffee – I try to avoid instant granules and would go for tea instead if this was the only option. A previous workplace used a popular brand of tea bags (I genuinely forget which one) which tasted stale no matter how fresh the packet was. I worked my way through a box of Asda’s own brand decaffeinated tea but won’t be buying it again as it tastes, to my palette, like sawdust if it is brewed for too long.

So, when I heard that Lahloo Tea were looking for people to try out loose leaf tea and ditch the dreaded tea bags, I jumped at the chance (and cheekily nominated myself!) to give their Tovolo tea infuser a try. I'll be posting my review once I've been able to give it a proper try.

Chewy Flapjacks

I like flapjacks - they feel all wholesome and good for you. Which I guess they are, if you ignore the copious amounts of butter that go into making them. Not a biscuit, not a cake; they fall into that undefinable weird snack group. My grandmother makes lovely crunchy flapjacks which is what first inspired me to look into a recipe but I must admit that I'm more of a soft and chewy person myself. Hence, when I tried some of a friend's yummy batch, I was quick to nick the recipe and modify it to make my perfect flapjack experience. Just so you know, porridge oats are really cheap - you can buy 1kg of Tesco Value Oats for a mere 58p which will make four batches of flaps.

Soft & Moreish, Ultra Tasty Flapjacks
(with thanks to Dan for the initial inspiration!)

Makes:

Soft and chewy flapjacks with a sweet and buttery taste. A great way to use up over ripe bananas.

Ingredients:

80g demarera sugar

110g (unsalted) butter

250g oats

1 banana (ideally really ripe)

2 tbsp golden syrup or runny honey

Method:

- Preheat oven to 220c

- Melt butter on a low heat

- Remove from heat and stir in sugar and syrup/honey for a few minutes (it won't all combine into a smooth mixture so don't worry too much!)

- Add oats to wet mixture and mix well until all the oats have a thin coating of buttery sugar-ness

- Mash up the banana with a fork until it's smooth and gooey

- Fold banana into oats

- Spread evenly into a non-stick tray so that it's about 2.5cm thick

- Bake for 15 - 20 minutes until golden brown on top

- Leave to cool for 5 minutes and then score into pieces with a knife

Variations:

Add dried banana chips, chocolate chunks or soaked raisins to the mixture before you bake for more flavour.

Teapod

"There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea."
Bernard-Paul Heroux

Having raved previously about my love of coffee, it must be said that I'm an equal fan of tea. I usually have the obligatory cup of Breakfast tea with milk (appropriately) at breakfast time often followed by a cup of Earl Grey with friends later in the day. I originially happened across a lovely contemporary café called Teapod when I was on work experience near London Bridge when I was fifteen. It's a fresh and friendly place, only a stones throw from Tower Bridge. You can choose from more than twenty different kinds of loose tea which they serve to you in a small, Japanese teapot. I've only really tried their Earl Grey as from the first cup, I was addicted, but I hear their selection is very good quality. Their food is also quite good (their soup particularly) and isn't too bad price-wise for the London area.