National Cream Tea Day

June 26 2015

There seems to be a national day for anything these days and I’d love to know who decides on what and when, but as a cream tea aficionado how can I let this one pass without a mention?

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea”
~ Henry James

And surely there is a no more perfect one than the cream tea – whether Devon style (with the jam on top) or the Cornish style (with the cream on top) what matters most is the freshness of the ingredients. Light. melt in the mouth scones, fruity strawberry jam, and lashings of golden crusted clotted cream. Are you drooling yet?

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The Waymarker, near Constantine, was named champion of the ‘Truly Cornish Clotted Cream Tea‘ in 2014 but I am doing my best to seek out decent rivals 🙂

Where and what is the best afternoon tea you have experienced? My most memorable is High Tea at the Victoria Falls Hotel, Zimbabwe – tiny crust-less sandwiches, Petit fours, scones, cakes and Earl Grey tea served on Stanley Terrace with spectacular views of the Victoria Falls bridge down the Batoka Gorge with the spray rising from The Falls.

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Heyjude

I have lived in the UK for most of my life, but when young I definitely had wanderlust and even ended up living in South Africa for several years which was a wonderful experience. I now look forward to a long and leisurely retirement doing what I like most - gardening, photography, walking and travelling.

80 thoughts on “National Cream Tea Day”

      1. Shouldn’t thinks so, Jo! And I’ve just had a very dark, bitter home-made chocolate cake, berries and lashings of mascarpone cheese!

  2. I bow to your superior cream tea knowledge, Jude. I usually opt for cheese scones but if I’m in the mood for something sweet a jam and cream scone will do very nicely. 🙂

    You’ll have to publicise this day a little better next year. Lots of us are missing out!

  3. Jude, I’m very pleased to hear that you will continue to research to find the best cream teas in the country, just so you can pass this valuable information on to us. What a sacrifice you’re prepared to make!

    I’m looking forward to a special high tea in Melbourne in two weeks, at Adriano Zumbo’s new dessert restaurant Fancy Nance. I’m going with my sister and my nephews. https://www.facebook.com/fancynancehightea

    1. Aw, you know, someone has to do it 😀
      And I look forward to hearing about Fancy Nance and all the fancies you indulge in!

  5. You really are the devil incarnate. First you tempt my pure mind into postprocessing, and now into cream teas. What next? just stop being such a luscious photographer.

      1. You can – we call it scones, jam and cream in our spade-a-spade colonial way! Or Devonshire Tea. I’m not a fan of eating them, but they look luscious.

        3. Strictly speaking they should be ‘Cream Teas’ then no-one gets offended. We had some delicious stem-ginger ones in Devon a few years ago. Must go back there 🙂

  6. Lol. A woman on a mission 🙂 Happy hunting Jude. I had a clotted cream tea at a place in Devon on my last trip to the UK, just can’t remember where. Loads of yumminess 🙂

  7. Such a delicious photo, Jude. I could eat that cream tea right now for breakfast. 😛 The best and most indulgent teatime treats I’ve ever had, was ‘High Tea’ at The Oyster Box Hotel. I could really do that again. 🙂

  8. I missed it! When my mother visited over the years I would take her up to London for tea. We ‘did’ the Savoy, Dorchester, Ritz and Claridges. When the car journey became too much we went to Lavenham Swan. Himself and I recently had a very pleasant aft tea at the Salthouse Hotel with Sir Lancelot in Ipswich. But I have to say my all time favourite cream tea was at the Headland Hotel in Newquay. Was it the views or the giant scones?

  9. I thought from the name that cream tea was tea with cream in it, but apparently tea has taken on a broader sense. I confirmed that in the online Oxford Dictionaries at

    http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/tea

    which gives the usage as chiefly British and defines that sort of tea as ‘A light afternoon meal consisting typically of tea to drink, sandwiches, and cakes.’ I have heard the expression high tea, but here you’re getting high from the cream.

    1. When I was a child we ate breakfast, dinner (cooked meal at lunch-time) and then tea which consisted of sandwiches – often bread and jam, a drink of tea, a piece of fruit and if we were lucky some cake. On weekends we had ham and salad! High Tea is much posher 😉

  10. I’ve been eating my Devonshire teas wrong, then. They were Cornish teas without me realising. Well, except we don’t often get clotted cream here. 😦 We had a Cornishman in our team when I was working on an IT project many years ago. Whenever it was his turn to bring in morning tea, he would bring scones, jam and clotted cream. It was a stressful job and these were our little release valves and I think for that reason they rank up there as my some of my favourite morning teas. 🙂

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