(gentle bright music) - Hi everyone, and welcome to Afternoon Tea on "Stephanie's Recipe Journal."

To me, afternoon tea isn't just a meal, it's a lovely change of pace to the day where a bit of elegance and tradition meets comfort and charm.

Today we're making the classics, crisp cucumber sandwiches, traditional English scones, cherry and almond thumbprint cookies.

And, of course, the perfect pot of tea.

So pull up a chair, grab your prettiest teacup, and let's make these tea time delights.

I think it makes the whole day feel softer, sweeter, and a little bit regal, although crowns are optional.

(cheerful bright music) (cheerful bright music continues) (pleasant bright music) Traditionally each tier, or course, of a classic afternoon tea is made up of something unique.

With the bottom being sandwiches, the middle being scones, and the top being a sweet dessert.

These are all recipes that can be made ahead of time so that you can assemble your tea stand easily.

We're going to start with our bottom tier, which are cucumber sandwiches.

So we have everything here that we need for our cucumber tea sandwiches.

And first thing that we're going to do is slice our cucumber.

I have a seedless cucumber, even though they do have seeds, but they have a little less moisture.

So that'll make it better for our sandwiches.

And we just need to make sure that we slice our cucumber as thinly as possible.

So in order to accommodate that, I am using a mandolin.

But don't worry if you don't have one, just slice them as thin as you possibly can.

And I just have it on the thinnest setting.

And I am going to very carefully slice our cucumber just straight up, doesn't have to be anything fancy.

(cucumber swooshing) (mandolin clicking) (gentle bright music continues) And now, just because the cucumbers do hold moisture, I'm just placing these on some paper towels just to absorb some of that moisture before we put it on our sandwich.

Okay, now I've got some herbs here that we are going to be adding to some softened or room temperature cream cheese.

I just used the whipped variety just because it makes it a little bit more creamy and airy for our sandwich.

But you can use whatever you have.

So I am going to just chop up some chives.

We need probably a tablespoon of chives.

If you like that oniony sort of flavor then, by all means, go ahead and add a few more.

Normally I don't use a knife to cut my chives, I just take a scissors and snip 'em, it really is pretty easy.

But I thought for this, eh, let's go ahead and chop 'em up.

I think that's good.

And then our other herb that we are adding is some fresh dill.

So for our dill, just kind of take your knife and just try to gently scrape it off of the stem.

(gentle bright music continues) Mm, I can smell that dill.

It smells fabulous.

Okay, now give this a chop.

(knife tapping) (gentle music continues) That's looking good.

All right, I'm going to put this aside here for now.

And pull in our room temperature cream cheese.

Now, you know, you can use a hand-mixer if you want, but this is nice and soft.

And, honestly, I'm just gonna use a spatula.

It'll mix it up just as easy.

And to our cream cheese, we are adding two tablespoons of mayonnaise.

It just gives it a little tangyness, more so even than our cream cheese.

We have here a fourth of a teaspoon of garlic powder.

And then we're gonna add, like I said, about a tablespoon of the chives.

Mm, a little bit more.

And this is about two tablespoons of the fresh dill.

(gentle bright music continues) Just give that a good stir.

(ingredients swooshing) (gentle music continues) See how easily that mixes together?

No need for any extra tools.

(gentle bright music continues) All right, now let's assemble our sandwiches.

So for our cucumber sandwiches, I'm just using thinly sliced white sandwich bread.

It's pretty traditional for cucumber sandwiches.

We're just gonna spread a thin layer of our cream cheese mixture on both sides of our bread.

(cheerful bright music) So an interesting fact is that afternoon tea started with the Duchess of Bedford needing a little something in the late afternoon.

And it was then during Queen Victoria's time that it turned into a tradition.

The Duchess would enjoy a private tray of tea, bread and butter, and a small cake.

Soon she began inviting friends to join her at her estate, and the ritual caught on among fashionable society.

By the 1850s, afternoon tea became a social event, not just an in-between meal snack.

And a tea sandwich wouldn't be a tea sandwich if we didn't cut off those crusts.

I definitely wanna get that straight edge there.

(knife shuffling) (cheerful music continues) And then once we have our square, just go ahead and slice that in half.

Don't throw your crusts away, they make really great snacks.

So what I am going to do next is just store them in the fridge while I'm making the rest of our tea time treats.

The recipes for these will be online.

Smoked salmon, which just has a little bit of compound butter that has some shallots and some other yummy herbs in there.

And I put this on a wheat seeded bread.

And then we just have a very, very simple egg salad.

Or as they call it in the UK, egg-mayonnaise sandwich that I put on just a swirled rye bread.

So while we're making our other treats, I keep them fresh by just covering it with that damp paper towel.

And I'm gonna store in the fridge.

(gentle bright music) (gentle bright music) So if the cucumber sandwiches were the light and lovely part of our afternoon tea, these classic English scones are the real heart.

With or without currents, they are the perfect second course.

So let me show you how to make them.

We are gonna use our food processor to help us make our scones today.

And so, I am just going to add to the bowl of this food processor two and a half cups of all-purpose flour.

One third cup of granulated sugar.

(gentle bright music continues) A teaspoon of salt.

And four teaspoons of baking powder.

So you might be wondering why we're adding all of this baking powder.

But what's happening is the baking powder releases carbon dioxide gas when it gets wet and also when it gets heated.

And those bubbles expand in the oven and create height and a tender crumb.

The scones have a heavier dough because of the cream and the butter.

So this extra baking powder ensures that it lifts and gives us a soft texture.

So we just wanna get our dry ingredients just mixed up just a little bit.

So I'm just gonna put our lid on and give it a few pulses.

(food processor whirring) (gentle music continues) Then to that, we're gonna add our chilled butter.

And this is six tablespoons of unsalted butter.

(gentle bright music continues) That gets added to our flour mixture.

Get in there, there we go.

Come on.

Now, I am just going to pulse this until our mixture looks kind of like some fine breadcrumbs.

We don't want it to get to the point where it's all clumping together.

This is perfect, it kind of looks just like very fine breadcrumbs.

That's exactly what we're looking for.

Since we have the lid off, now we are just going to add, this is one third cup of whole milk and one third cup of cream into our flour butter mixture.

And some people like to take it out of the food processor to get it all mixed up, but I find it's just as easy to keep it in.

And I'm just going to process this enough to bring our dough together.

(food processor whirring) (gentle music continues) Perfect.

Now, one more step here, we are just gonna cover it back up and let this just kind of sit for just a couple minutes.

But it'll allow that moisture to kind of absorb into the flour and butter mixture even a little bit more.

So let's preheat our oven, it needs to be at 425.

And now we're gonna roll out our scones.

Flour your surface.

And now let's just get our dough on the counter.

Knead gently, but bring all of those errant pieces together in your dough.

Okay, now our dough is coming together.

And you can either pat it out or, if you prefer, just use a rolling pin.

And we want to get this dough to about an inch, inch and a half, 'cause I like these scones to really be more on the taller side.

They definitely look more classic British scone that way.

All right.

And I have, this is about a two inch or so cutter.

You can do a fluted side if you want, but I like these to just be straight sided.

And the trick here is, we're just going to press straight down.

Don't twist, just press your cutter straight down.

That will help your scone to rise up straight and not kind of be wonky.

I've got a sheet pan here that I lined with parchment paper.

This dough should make about eight scones total.

And what I'm going to do is, as I get these cut, I'm gonna roll the dough back together and give it another go until I get eight out.

(gentle bright music continues) Okay, I'm gonna cover these up with some plastic wrap.

Set 'em aside for 15 minutes, give them their second wash.

And then put them in the oven.

These actually will go in the oven for about 12 to 13 minutes.

Keep an eye on 'em though, just make sure they don't get too brown.

(cheerful bright music) (cheerful bright music continues) (cheerful bright music continues) (oven tray shuffling) (cheerful music continues) Mm, mm, mm.

Lovely.

Here are our classic English scones.

Gonna let them cool off.

And in the meantime, I'm gonna reduce the temperature down to 350 degrees on our oven, so we are ready to make our almond cherry cookies.

(cheerful bright music continues) The scone may be the heart of our afternoon tea, but every gathering needs a little sparkle.

And these cherry almond thumbprints look like tiny jewels on the top tier of our tea stand.

Let me show you how to make them.

So to get our cookies started, we need one stick of butter (wrapper shuffling) (cheerful music continues) into the bowl of our... Oops, into the bowl of our stand mixer with a paddle attachment.

And our granulated sugar.

(mixer shirring) (cheerful bright music continues) So one of the reasons why I love this recipe is because it just makes a small amount of cookies.

It's not one of those recipes that you have 100 cookies and you feel compelled to eat all of them.

I do believe that we are at the point now where we're good.

And to this now, I am going to add both vanilla extract and almond extract.

I have a half a teaspoon of both, and then we're gonna just give that a little whir and get that incorporated.

(mixer whirring) (cheerful bright music continues) Mm, I can smell that almond extract.

I think it smells divine.

Okay, here we go.

And next up is our dry ingredients.

So what I have here is all-purpose flour, to which I am adding almond flour.

So it's not just almond extract that we're adding, but almond flour, which gives these cookies just a wonderful texture and a little bit of crunch.

To our all-purpose flour and our almond flour, I am adding a half a teaspoon of salt.

Our dry mixture is going into our butter and sugar mixture.

Get it all down in that bowl.

And I'm just gonna mix these together until they're nicely incorporated.

(mixer whirring) I've got a scoop here that is not quite a tablespoon, but because we're making these for afternoon tea, we need them to be a little bit dainty.

So simple, just, we're gonna scoop.

(scoop rattling) (gentle bright music) Roll them together.

And put 'em on our parchment lined baking sheet.

So I am just gonna go ahead and scoop all of these out.

And once I have them scooped, then we'll make our indentations for putting our jam inside.

Let's space them out just a bit 'cause they will spread.

(gentle bright music continues) There we go.

And now, I've got some cherry jam and I have a half a teaspoon spoon.

You can use your thumb if you like, but I also like to just indent with this part of the teaspoon.

It just makes it a nice, little indentation, it's kind of uniform.

The most important thing is that your indentations are fairly solid without any cracks because you don't want your jam, when it hits the oven, to be oozing out.

(paper shuffling) (gentle music continues) All right, so now we're gonna take this same half teaspoon and just go ahead and fill our indentations with our jam.

So the easiest thing, you guys, are using fingers.

And plus, this jam has some whole cherries.

So it looks like one whole cherry kind of fits in our indentation nicely.

You know, it would be really pretty if you use different jams with different colors.

Like I can see, like, here we have cherry.

I think apricot jam would be delicious with an almond flavor.

You could do strawberry.

Use your imagination and what flavor combinations you like best.

Here we go into our preheated 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes or so.

Again, keep an eye on them because they might need a little less time than that.

So here we go.

So while our cookies are baking, let's go ahead and make the glaze.

All we need is a cup of confectioner's sugar.

I have in here a teaspoon of almond extract.

And here I have four tablespoons of milk in here, but I'm not gonna use all of it at once.

It's just until we reach the consistency we want.

So I'm starting with about half of that, and then we're just going to whisk it.

(whisk whirring) (gentle music continues) I want it just a little bit thinner.

And, again, you can do it to however you like.

If you like your glaze a little on the thicker side, by all means, adjust it accordingly.

(whisk whirring) (gentle music continues) That's looking good and it sounds like our cookies are ready.

These smell fabulous and they look delightful.

We're gonna let them cool for a few minutes and then transfer them to a wire rack.

And once they cool completely, that's when we're gonna glaze 'em.

Our cookies are cool now, and we're ready to give them their fabulous little glaze.

I'm gonna use the whisk that I used to make the glaze with, but you could do this one of several ways.

You could use a fork and just kind of gently whisk little lines over.

You could put it in a piping bag, but we're gonna kind of go freeform with our whisk here.

And, easy peasy, just kind of lift it out and gently zhuzh some glaze over.

If you want more, you certainly can put more on.

And it's just kinda kind of fun.

Just be artsy with it.

Mm, mm, mm.

All right, there we have it.

The glaze needs just about 10 minutes to set up, and then we are going to put it all together for you.

(gentle bright music continues) (cheerful pleasant music) The absolute star of afternoon tea is our tea.

And although this is not traditional afternoon tea in the British fashion, I found these blooming tea balls that I just thought I need to show you guys 'cause these are just so cool.

So I go to London, I love London so much.

And I've been going to London every year now for ages.

And every time I go, I have to have afternoon tea.

So whether it's at a famous hotel or whether it's at a local tea shop, afternoon tea is delightful.

So, anyway, we're just going to now let this guy do its thing and bloom.

But now, we also have to do a traditional tea, right?

So I have just your standard teapot.

Now, of course, if you wanted to be official official, you would take your loose tea, you would put your loose tea directly into your teapot, cover it up with your hot water.

But then when you go to pour your tea, you would have a strainer that you would put over your tea cup to strain out any of the loose tea.

But, after all, we aren't in London right now.

And so, I am taking the liberty of using a tea bag to make our tea.

This is Earl Grey tea.

But I have to show you guys, look at these little hearts, isn't that darling?

All right, so I'm just gonna put two of these heart Earl Grey tea bags in our teapot.

To that, I'm just gonna fill my teapot with my very hot water.

And this guy, we're gonna put our lid on.

And then let that steep for about three to four minutes or so, depending on how you like the strength of your tea.

(cheerful pleasant music continues) (cheerful pleasant music continues) (gentle bright music) So here we have our plate of goodies.

We've got our tea sandwiches, which is our first course.

Then we're going to enjoy our scones.

And then we're gonna enjoy our lovely little cherry almond cookies.

But what I wanted to point out to you is, for our scone toppings, we have the traditional toppings.

Lemon curd, some raspberry jam, but also some clotted cream.

I hope you enjoyed our afternoon tea escape.

I think it's proof that any day can be a little sweeter, a little more indulgent, and a whole lot more magnificent.

Thanks for joining me.

Until our next cuppa, cheerio.

(gentle bright music continues) (gentle bright music continues) (gentle bright music continues) (gentle bright music fades)