New Year's Eve Tea.

Ah. Few things make me more happy than a lovely afternoon tea. And since I have limited afternoon tea experience, I know of no other way than fresh made scones with clotted cream, rose petal jam, marmalade and lovely English tea.

I have been jonesing to try clotted cream at home, but have always been a bit intimidated by what seemed to be a difficult proposition. But then stepped in Donna Hay and it all became clearer (or should I say, creamier?).

The recipe was simple: Take 3 cups of double cream and bake in the oven in a baking dish covered with foil for 8 hours at 175 degrees. That's right, 8 hours. Then, take out of oven, cover with clingfilm and refrigerate overnight. All that was the straightforward part.

Or so I thought. I couldn't find true double cream, so I used the heaviest whipping cream I could find. Donna Hay said that when you take the clotted cream out of the refrigerator, there will be a crispy layer that you scrape off and then take all the clotted cream underneath and put into a bowl. Well, I had no crispy layer, only a thick layer of cream and blue-ish water underneath. My cream wasn't high fat enough, but it still made quite a bit of clotted cream.


(We had tea in our sunroom... it was VERY sunny for a December day!)

After realizing that my clotted cream was a success, I hurriedly went about making scones. I found a recipe from Cooking Light magazine online that made really lovely scones, very quickly. You can see them in the photo at the top, or here...



They look alot like regular biscuits, but they had a really nice scone-y flavour.

To round out our tea, we finally broke open the rose petal jelly I bought at Fortnum & Mason this past October. I love Rose Petal Jelly. So it was with great pleasure that we opened that and the lovely orange marmalade from France.


We sat down, still in our pj's, ready to partake in our beautiful bounty when we realized that it was a holiday and our friend P who lives upstairs would be home. So we made the call and down he came. Tea for two became tea for four. What a delightful way to ring out the old year.


So although it may be a little late... HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!