Each and every morning for the past few years Christine, Sally and Julie prepare and bake our Tudor Court scones for that day which ensures they are perfect in quality and freshness.
A cream tea cannot be considered a cream tea unless there is cream and the type of cream that should be used is clotted cream. Originally clotted cream was only produced in the West country this is where the right soil, mild climate and correct breed of cattle come together to create milk with a high enough cream content to produce clotted cream. Even today when clotted cream is in a greater demand it will almost certainly be made in Devon, Cornwall or Somerset.
Clotted cream has a consistency similar to soft butter and can be used as a replacement for butter in such things as toffees and is great on freshly baked bread with jam but most importantly it is perfect for putting on a warm scone.
The ideal scone is made from just a few ingredients; eggs, milk, butter and self raising flour all the kind of ingredients that you would find on a farm and that's where scones with clotted cream and jam originally came from. Scones are best served warm straight from the oven and should be eaten on the day that they are made.
Jam is yet another favourite of the farmyard kitchen and was the old fashioned way of preserving fruit so that the tastes of Summer would be available the whole year round. It would be lightly cooked in large sauce pans, sugar would then be added and it would be brought to the boil for a short time. The boiling sterilises the jam and the sugar acts as the preservative.
