A Moment for Lady Devotea's Birthday

Within a group of fellow tea enthusiasts, which I like to refer to as The Underground Tea Syndicate, there is an Australian gentleman known as “The Devotea.” He and his wife, a.k.a. Lady Devotea, have a wonderful line of teas, one of which is my daughter's absolute favorite (Persian Princess).  While they blend lovely teas, they both also write lovely things, and I was fortunate enough to convince Lady Devotea to provide a guest blog post a little while ago, which was a lovely description of a tea blended in memory of her dear father. 


I had the extremely good fortune to meet these fine folks at the 2013 World Tea Expo, where we enjoyed afternoon tea together. Now I won't say it was the scones at this particular venue that was the cause, but The Devotea has made no bones about the fact that American scones are not up to snuff.   He was kind enough to share a blog post outlining what a scone should truly be and even included the makings of a recipe favored by his lovely wife. I took this recipe (listed in grams and such foreign measurements), tested things a bit, guessed at times and temperatures, and finally arrived at what I believe to be a good representation of what a “proper scone” should be. 

So, in celebration of Lady Devotea's birthday, and also in celebration of her kind, generous and adventurous spirit, here is her recipe. 



Lady Devotea’s Proper Scones
Ingredients
3 cups of self raising flour (or add 1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder to each cup of regular flour)
1 cup of actual proper cream
1 cups of ‘Sprite’ or other fizzy lemony soda
Pinch of salt

Preparation


Mix together flour, cream, and ‘Sprite’ or other fizzy lemony soda. Add a pinch of salt, form into a sticky dough, rest for 5 minutes (the dough, not you), cut out with a floured glass (or 2 inch fluted cookie cutter) and bake on a tray spread just far enough apart to almost touch when they rise. Bake at 400°F for approximately 15 minutes. Take them out when they almost start to colour (No, that is not a spelling error. It is apparently the “proper” way to spell color. If you’re in Australia.).

Happy birthday, Lady Devotea. May this year bring you many adventures of the most successful kind!

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