We’ve wanted to go out for an elegant afternoon tea for quite some time. Like the rest of our travel and holiday plans this is indefinitely postponed. But how lovely it is to go out for afternoon tea. Itś a great opportunity to dress up, sip a cup of tea and lunch on some cute little sandwiches, pastries and scones! But before we find another occasion for this, we thought we would try to make the scones at home and practice our small talk. Scones are a must for an afternoon tea menu but they are less known in Central Eastern Europe.

Classic scones recipe:
Ingredients:
6 tbsp unsalted butter, cubed
2 1/2 cups of self-raising flour, plus more for dusting
1 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp sugar
3/4 cup buttermilk (or full-fat milk)
One large egg
Milk for brushing
An optional drop of vanilla extract 

Method:
Mix all the ingredients and create a dough. Place the dough on a flour-dusted surface and roll out to about 2 cm thick.
Use a biscuit cutter and cut out rounds. Place them on the baking paper. 
Brush the tops with milk.
Bake on 220 degrees for about 15min.

Serve with jam and clotted cream. We served it with our grandma’s home made strawberry jam made of strawberries from our garden. It’s was so delicious!

More about afternoon tea in our next post. Stay tuned!

Baking with children

There is a Czech saying “kids who are busy playing, don’t fuss”. We like to involve children and make cooking and baking fun. It’s playing and learning at the same time. It’s about following simple tasks, learning to manipulate with dishes and food. Bigger kids can help and toddlers will use it as a role play opportunity. Our daughter just loves to take out pots and pans, put them on the floor, fill them with raisins and other things she can find and copy mama.

We want to support her imagination so we are planning to order the toys below. We also love the fact that they are wooden and they can be ordered conveniently online. Click on the images, if you want to access the website (affiliate links).