A United Kingdom tea party with pumpkin spice scones

Hi! Future Ticia here, a few years ago I got together with a bunch of other bloggers and cooked our way around the world. Our very first stop was the United Kingdom, and I have to admit the first thing I thought of when I heard United Kingdom was having a tea party.  My kids love to drink tea, and I thought this would be a gentle introduction with things they are mostly familiar with. This particular outing led to a discovery of my favorite scone recipe, pumpkin spice scone, a great basis to add things into.

We started mixing and baking, and having fun.

There was a lot of giggling and spilling, and general fun in making this pumpkin spice scone recipe.

Pumpkin Spice Scones

2 cups flour
7 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon ginger
6 tablespoons cold butter (can also partially freeze)
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
3 tablespoons cream
1 egg
* this particular time I used 2 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice instead of each individual spice

1. 
   Preheat oven to 425.
2. Combine dry ingredients and cut in butter (hint you can freeze the butter and then grate it with a cheese grater to combine more easily)Fold in wet ingredients to form. (I have no clue why it started counting at 2)
3. Fold in wet ingredients to form ball.  ** this was a very sticky dough, so I coated my hands very thoroughly with flour.**
4. ** Extra step, if you want to add something else in, this is the time to do it. We regularly add in fresh berries, or sometimes if we’re feeling like a bit of extra sugar some chocolate chips.
5. Form into log and cut dough into triangles.  I formed it into several circles and cut them into wedges.

Bake about 10-12 minutes.

Adding in the rest of the ingredients for our United Kingdom tea party

While that was busy baking and the kids were happily munching on their slices of cheese and crackers I made each of us a cucumber sandwich.

Kids version of a cucumber sandwich:

Slice cucumbers fairly thin, spread cream cheese over bread and then layer cucumbers.  That’s it.

Adult version of a cucumber sandwich:

Buy flavored cream cheese, I got the garlic flavor, yum, yum, yum.  Spread thickly over your bread.  Slice a cucumber thinly and layer a lot of them all over.  Eat and ENJOY!

Ordinarily our tea parties are at the dining room table with my fine china and good manners.  However, February has been a month of sickness and Jeff working late many nights, and just generally being overly tired.

So, we, as in I because Jeff didn’t get home until after their bedtime, opted to watch the Max and Ruby episode set in London while we ate our tea party.

All in all, this month we didn’t learn super a lot about our country, so I’m setting a poor first example, but I plan to go back and have us learn more.

Try some more Cooking around the world ideas