Classic Scones + Clotted Cream
If you love great British classics like Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations and Jane Eyre, these are the dishes you want to note down for your treasured recipe box. The scones with clotted cream and sweet jam are always my go to, and they are an absolute must if you are putting together an afternoon tea ceremony. Dainty little bites of scones and tiny finger sandwiches are perfect for a bridal shower or a baby shower.
I have a number of friends who are obsessed with British Royals and TV shows like Downton Abbey, The Crown and Bridgerton. To be honest, I should include myself in that list too because I absolutely love British culture, so much so that even my own bridal shower was Royal Ascot theme. Do I live for the royal weddings? You bet! Yes, I did take the day off to watch the live streamed wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, as well as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. It just so happens I didn’t exist in this universe when Princess Diana and Prince Charles were wedded back in 1981.
Anyway, I digress but perhaps my little story should indicate how much I take these recipes seriously and do my utmost to maintain the authentic flavors. Baking scones at home is often closely tied to heritage baking in British culture, as well as other cultures that directly stem from the Brits, like Canadian and Americans. They tend to be made using family recipes rather than recipe books, since it is often a family member who holds the "best" and most-treasured recipe. Given the fact that I didn’t grow up in British culture, I did a lot of research, as well as testing and trying other people’s heirloom recipes. I finally nailed down what I like and today, I am going to share with you my personal recipe of the classic English scones and clotted cream, which are going to live on in my family cookbook.
Recipe — Classic Scones
with Clotted Cream + Sweet Jam
Serves: 4
Traditional English scones are barely sweetened, because they are eaten with sweet jam and clotted cream. They are a lot lighter, flakier and tastier than their American counterpart. Then there is the clotted cream — the name speaks for itself and it is divine! Anyone who has had fresh clotted cream, understands my excitement and obsession. It’s essentially a thick cream with a nutty, rich and sweet flavor with a softened cream cheese texture.
Scones
AP Flour – 500 g + extra for dusting
Baking Powder – 2 Tsp
Sugar – 2 Tbsp
Salt – 1 tsp
Butter — 110 g, frozen and grated
Milk – 250 ml
Heavy Cream – 3 Tbsp
Egg - 1
Preheat the oven to 375 F. Lightly grease two baking trays.
In a large mixing bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt.
Note: it is important to sift all the dry ingredients through a sieve, it will make the scones more light and airy.
Make sure your hands are cold for this step. Using cold hands, grate the frozen butter with a cheese grater.
Combine the grated butter with the flour mixture. Rub in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Crack the egg into a measuring jug, then whisk in the heavy cream and milk.
Put aside 3-4 Tbsp of this egg mixture for brushing the top of the scones before baking.
Stir the in the remainder of the egg mixture into the flour and combine with a large fork until you have a soft and sticky dough.
If it is too sticky, go ahead and add 1 Tbsp of flour at a time until the dough comes together.
Note: Don’t knead the dough too much because we don’t want any gluten formation. The scones should be flaky, not chewy like flatbread.
Turn the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and roll it out to 2 cm thickness.
Cut into as many rounds as possible with a fluted 5cm/2in cutter and place them on the prepared baking trays.
Brush the tops of the scones with the reserved milk-egg mixture.
Bake for 15–20 minutes, or until the scones are well risen and a pale, golden-brown color.
Lift onto a wire rack to cool for a few minutes. Make sure to serve it while it’s still warm.
To serve, split the scones and spread on a generous dollop of clotted cream and top it off with a bit of strawberry or raspberry jam.
Next up, my clotted cream recipe. Trust me you do not want to miss this one! I can never go back to having a plain jane scone. Clotted cream is an absolute must.
That being said, if you don’t have the time to make clotted cream, good quality butter will also work with the scones. You could also make or buy some compound butter from your local groceries. Compound butter is just a fancy culinary term for herb butter, basically butter that has been mixed with fresh or dried herbs. I recommend trying any of these — cranberry butter, brown sugar and cinnamon butter, or garlic and rosemary butter with my scone recipe.
Clotted Cream
If you live outside of the UK, don’t buy clotted cream! First of all, it’s nowhere to be found and if you happen to find it, which I did at my local Wholefoods in Los Anegeles, …and it looked gross. You can make a fresh batch yourself at home. It will taste much better and will last you longer. All you need is one ingredient — heavy cream.
It just takes a little bit of time — 2 days but please don’t let that scare you. It’s so easy, you really don’t have to do much, it’s pretty much a hands off recipe. In total, it will take a solid 24+ hours for the clotted cream to come together. So if you are planning on inviting your friends over for some afternoon tea on a Saturday, best to start this process on a Thursday night. I speak from experience and it comes out perfect every time!
Heavy Cream - 1 qt (4 cups)
Thursday Night
Ok so you are about to head to bed. Before you do that, preheat your oven to 175°F. Pour cream into a shallow glass or ceramic baking dish, ideally a 9x13 pan. The heavy cream should be about 1 ½ - 2 inches deep. Place the dish in the preheated oven. Bake for 12 hours. Do not touch it. Do not stir it.
Friday Morning
Remove from the oven and let it cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes to 1 hour. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 12 hours or until completely chilled.
Friday Night or Saturday Morning
Turn over a corner of the top layer of thickened cream; carefully pour out liquid underneath. You could save that extra liquid into a container and use it for baking.
Pack the clotted cream into a mason jar.
It really is that easy. I told you!
When you taste it, it should have a nutty, sweet and rich flavor. Ideally, the texture should be like a softened cream cheese with the richness of an unsalted butter and creaminess of thick whipped cream. But it is waaaaay better than both of these ingredients.
There are many ways to use clotted cream aside from on scones — spread it on toast or muffins, top it off on apple pie, fudge, ice cream and chocolate truffles, spoonful in a steaming bowl of oatmeal. It does have a high fat content but you weren’t expecting any less from a dish with the word “cream” attached to it, were you? Use it sparingly if you must and treat yourself once in awhile!
Note: Clotted cream can be refrigerated for up to 4 days. After 4 days, it’s probably best to freeze it or else it will turn rancid. Make sure it’s in an air-tight jar and you should be able to keep the cream in the freezer up to 3-4 months.
Sweet Jam
I don’t usually make jam at home because you can find so many good quality ones at your local grocery stores. Bonne Maman is our favorite and they have so many flavors to choose from — raspberry wild blueberry, orange marmalade. morello cherry, apricot, strawberry. fig and grape. My go to all year long is usually the raspberry but you really can’t go wrong with the other flavors.. With so much variety, you can even take your pick for each season — wild blueberry in the summer, marmalade and fig for fall, cranberry-cherry for winter and finally four-fruits in spring!
Speaking of, did you guys see the viral twitter thread about Bonne Maman back in February 2021? The heartwarming story has been hard to miss: a law professor is shopping at his local grocery store when sees an elderly woman struggling to get her favorite jam from a high shelf. Why is it her favorite? “I am a Holocaust survivor,” she says. “During the war, the family that owns the company hid my family in Paris. So now I always buy it.”
The company, whose founding families are famously secretive, and declined to comment and didn’t take any credit for the activity of its founders’ families during the war. But that has not stopped people, tens of thousands of people have shared the story since it began circulating on social media . It has prompted countless people to vow to buy only Bonne Maman-brand jam. For me, it’s always been my favorite brand but I will choose an anti-nazi jam on any given day!
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