Thursday, June 28, 2012

Clotted Cream (homemade) and jam



This is what I want...

I am relatively confident in my biscuit and scone abilities.  I have been perpetually frustrated by the lack of high fat milk and cream in this town.  I think all the dairy here is a little limp.  I have had a hankering for a good old fashioned cream tea and the number one attendee has to be clotted cream.

Clotted cream is insanely expensive in the stores and I am sure it's full of preservatives.  I have sampled it and even the imported stuff isn't the same as across the pond.  I am sure there's some importing rule about adding things that the Devon cows just don't have.

I'm simply going to smile, nod, and make my own.  Hell, I make everything else myself these days, bread, cheese, eggs (well, soon, the chickens are very very happy and I have total faith in their ability to keep us in eggs) so adding clotted cream to the mix isn't a stretch.

Clotted cream is thick and has a pale yellow tinge (in my memory) which *I* think I'll get by a very very very long and slow roast.  I went and did some online research and it appears I am right.

So, the day before I anticipate clotted cream, cream tea nirvana, I turned my oven to just shy of 200 degrees, poured a quart of the best quality (least pasturized) heavy cream I could find into a 9x13 crock and shoved it in the oven.

Timer set for 8 hours.  Now, we wait.
  
Ok, so, this is the saddest 'beauty' shot ever...  I put this in the oven and...we wait...

After 3 hours, it's doing SOMEthing...  (seriously, I do not have this sort of patience, next time I put it in at bedtime!)


After 8 hours, this smells INCREDIBLE!  Smells like caramel, buttery caramel.


It is taking EVERY ounce of my (substantial) being not to poke around with this.  I moved it to the counter, covered it lightly and walked away.  When it's room temperature, I'll put it in the fridge and we'll play with it in the morning. It needs to set up and every thing I do to it now will impede that and I care more about what's going to greet me in the morning than the satisfaction of futzing now.  

Seriously, this is agonizing. 

MORNING!

Ok, I took it out of the fridge and it looks the same but the 'crust' is thick and feels like leather.  This can't be good.  But WAIT!  I shoved a spoon, gingerly, on the sides and it began to roll up!  IT'S CLOTTED CREAM! The whey is pale and the solids are totally clotted and, well just LOOK!
 

it looks like ice cream but it's not!  It rolled up in one piece and I plunked it in a bowl, a little edge scraping and this is all that wasn't in one piece!
 

Fresh mound and then after I stirred it up, the crust incorporated nicely.  You still get little pieces that sort of disintegrate when you eat them.  This stuff is the bomb!  I think it's pretty authentic and all this only cost me $1.75.  I can't get a can of it for that price.
 

This is how much liquid is left from the pint of heavy cream.  I'm going to use 1 cup of it in the scones that will be under this cream in a couple of hours.  So, no waste! (like there ever is here).  This is my $1.75 investment.  Not bad if you ask me.
 

Sure, it takes time but it's not time that you have to DO anything. I think it's worth doing for friends coming or a cream tea.  Luckily, I have friends coming today AND tomorrow so it'll be well used up and sampled by the "Yanks".  I'll convert them one at a time!

Yeah, I'm a happy camper.  DO THIS!

/Tracy

PS

I made a quickie homemade jam to go on the scones and under the clotted cream:

1 lb strawberries, hulled and chopped
a few scrapes of lemon zest and the juice of 1 good lemon

BOIL until it the strawberries are cooked, 5 minutes?

Add 3/4 cup sugar and boil for 10-15 minutes, until it passes the wrinkle test.  Put a little blob on a cold plate, if, when you push your finger on the side toward the middle, it wrinkles, it's done!

Pour into a glass blown and shove it in the fridge.  After a it's cooled down a bit, cover it and eat it when it's cold, on scones, under clotted cream :)

Quickie jam!

  

Oh and the picture at the beginning of what I wanted... it's EXactly what I got.  Joy!

/enjoy!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment