Devonshire Tea: Making apricot jam and fresh scones

On our road trip on the Hinterland Drive in Gippsland, we met David, who runs the Fernholme campsite with a small cafe that offers his multiple-awards winning scones. The scones were indeed lovely, they were much lighter than the usual ones and almost melted on your tongue. We liked them so much, that we eventually researched the secret of such light scones. We found an interesting recipe, that lacked any butter or oil. I am unable to find it again on the Internet, but here are the ingredients

• 100g self-raising flour
• 25g caster sugar
• 150ml thickened cream
• a bit of salt

The recipe is dead simple, you just mix everything together in a big bowl. For the shape, I cheated a bit by using a muffin tray which reflected on the final product with a little unusual shape. We served the scones with apricot jam, since we were lucky that our neighbors had invited us to come over and pick some of their apricots. Their tree carried too many for them to eat them all and the birds started to munch them away. We picked about 3kg for the jam. We first washed and cut the fruit, then boiled it with some caster sugar and lemon juice.

To about a third of jam we added lemon balm leaves to give the sweet apricots a little bite. The result was very yummy – fresh (warm) scones with clotted cream and apricot jam. Here are a couple of pictures of making the jam and baking the scones.

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