Teatime & Baking
Scones, sponges, tarts and biscuits.
Victoria Sponge
The teatime cake by which every other teatime cake is judged. Two feather-light sponges, a scarlet layer of raspberry jam, a slick of softly whipped cream, and a snowfall of icing sugar.
Devonshire Scones with Clotted Cream
A proper cream tea: tall, tender scones warm from the oven, split open and heaped with a spoonful of thick clotted cream and a bright puddle of strawberry jam. The Devon method puts cream first and jam on top; the Cornish reverse. A quiet civil war is fought every summer over which is correct.
Barmbrack
An Irish tea loaf, especially associated with Halloween: charms baked inside once foretold your fortune (a ring meant marriage, a coin meant wealth). The tea-soaked fruit gives it a deep, dark sweetness.
Scottish Shortbread
A Scottish shortbread should be sandy, crumbling and pale gold, not brown. The classic ratio is one part sugar to two parts butter to three parts flour, with a little rice flour or cornflour to lighten the texture.
Dundee Cake
A rich Scottish fruit cake from the marmalade town of Dundee, lighter than a Christmas cake and crowned with concentric rings of blanched almonds.
Welsh Cakes
Picau ar y maen — little cakes on the stone. Cooked on a hot bakestone or heavy pan, spiced with mixed spice, freckled with currants, and best eaten warm with a dusting of caster sugar.
Bara Brith
Speckled bread — a Welsh tea loaf, deeply fruited, gently spiced, and made even better by an overnight soak of the fruit in strong black tea. Sliced thickly and buttered generously.
Bakestone Scones
Not oven scones — these are cooked flat on a hot griddle, the way scones were made before every kitchen had an oven. Soft in the middle, spotted bronze on the outside.