Tuesday 22 May 2018

Delia Smith’s Scone Recipe for the Perfect British Afternoon Tea

Delia Smith’s Scone Recipe is one of those recipes I’ve tried and tested many times.  You’ll find scone recipes everywhere from fancy fruit scones to cheese scones, buttermilk scones and the simplest of basic scones but to my mind the best scone recipe is one that works every time and provides the perfect light and airy base for clotted cream (or heavy whipped cream) and home made or the finest quality raspberry jam.

Delia Smith Scone Recipe
Just a word, when making these I suggest you double up on the scone recipe ingredients as you will find they mysteriously disappear off your baking tray when you’re trying to cool them to get them ready to serve.  In any case they will all be gone in a flash.

The traditional British afternoon tea of course looks for other goodies such as cucumber or egg sandwiches and probably chocolate cake, and if you take your tea at the Ritz London (book well beforehand) or any other grand tea-serving place it’ll be served on a three tier cake stand such as this one from gorgeous home accessories website Amara

Cuckoo Three Tier Cake Stand
Having said that to my mind the best scones need no other food to be served with them, and to guild the lily with sandwiches and cake just takes away from the joy eating scones on their own.  Be warned, one scone may allow you room for dinner, two or more most certainly will not.

I’ve written this post for the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, where I currently am (Dallas, not the hotel), and with whom I’ve recently been Tweeting about the British Afternoon Tea, so for them, we Brits pronounce scone as ‘on’, unless we are quite grand, in which case it should be pronounced scone, as in ‘tone’.  Not to be confused with biscuits, of course…………..and by the way.  The cream goes on the jam in my house – I’m happy to say that the Ritz appears to agree with me.  But it is a point that can be debated.