The Eden Project. Help yourself to jam and cream!

While in cornwall we had a trip to the Eden Project. We had never visited and one of our friends we were staying with also wanted to visit.

The site is remarkable as it is in an old china clay pit. With all the visitors there are several places to eat. We had a coffee and a cake when we arrived but later we all needed more sustenance after wandering around the Biodomes. 

In the large food court a sign caught our eyes.

Help yourself to jam and cream! 

Well we all three thought we were in heaven and next to no time, three scones were chosen and tea was ordered. We went for fruit scones as there was only one plain scone left and that was a bid of an odd shape. Tea was presented in mugs. The Passenger is not a great fan of mugs as she thinks tea should only be served in fine china cups and tea pots.

The Passenger and the Friend also like their tea the same strength. Strength is perhaps the wrong word to describe their tea, anaemic is a better word. Frugality is also a trait they share so we ended up with two mugs of hot water and a, as in one, tea bag. The driver had his usual everyday tea.

We helped ourselves to the jam and cream, luckily there was enough for the three of us!

The cream was clotted and the jam was strawberry. 

The whole ethic of the Eden project is of sustainability and in this spirit the jam and the cream are both sourced locally. The scones are backed fresh each day in the kitchen of the restaurants. The scones were good, a bit heavy, fresh but not just out of the oven fresh. It would have been better if they had been popped into an oven just to reheat them.

The cafe area was interesting, it was laid out with long tables and benches made from RSJs and thick planks. 

Milk was supplied in a large jug from which you helped yourself and serviettes were a kitchen roll on a pole, dotted around the tables.

When we were there it was not very busy and we had plenty of space but I would think if the Cafe was busy it could get very cramped.

We all enjoyed our cream tea, especially the Friend as she was finding a bit of a long time since the last feed. The Passenger managing to help herself to the correct amount of jam and cream without the embarrassment of having to go back for a refill. 

Ambiance and Presentation:- 3 Not a room for a quiet cream tea but more like a motorway service station. Mugs and not cups.
Jam and Cream:- 5 Quality and portion size as we did the portion control it could hardly be anything else
Scones:- 4 Good and made on site.
Tea:- 4 A reasonable choice.
Service:- 4 Friendly counter Staff.

Overall:- 20/25

Lanhydrock House cream room.

The Driver and the Passenger visited Lanhydrock house on the way back from their honeymoon many years ago.  Lanhydrock house near Bodmin in Cornwall has one of the most impressive sets of kitchens of any National Trust house we have visited. The Kitchens had been remodelled in the late Victorian era, after the house had been almost completely burnt to the ground.

It has kitchens for almost all the different needs of the house. A bread bakery, a meat preparation room, game larder a dairy and something I had never seen before, a clotted cream room.

It was laid out with broad shallow bowls sitting over a heat source, with the cream scoops and cream jugs beside.

It was a nice little insight into the backstage areas of a grand victorian country house.

Lamorna Pottery and the perfect scones.

Near where we were staying in Cornwall was the Lamorna Pottery, which has a tea shop attached. Both the Driver and the Passenger have visited here in the past. Previous visits had been prior to meeting each other and then later, together and then later still with children. So it is true we have a long history with this tea shop.

On arrival it was clear that little had changed since the last visit nearly twenty years ago.

Inside the tea room is small bright and clean with tables in the garden. The pottery is no longer a production pottery but they sell lots of different gifts.

Our memories of the teas here were of wonderful teas with generous portions. The menu confirmed that they still did cream teas.

Not cheap but we hoped they would be as good as they were. We ordered 2 cream teas, with Earl Grey for the Passenger and Ceylon for the Driver.

When they arrived we were not disappointed. The only problem was that the teapots had two bags in each and as the passenger likes her tea on the weak side of weak, it was a bit of rush to remove the bags before the tea got too strong.  Hot water was given without asking.

The portions were as we remembered. The portion of cream was gigantic and the jam was of a similar size. The jam was strawberry and there was no choice but the quality was fantastic. It tasted of strawberries and there were large chucks of fruit in the jam.

The scones were warm. When opened they had a wonderful texture. We assembled our teas and tucked in.

The first bite was accompanied by groans of pleasure. The scones were absolutely wonderful, light and they just melted in the mouth. We both agreed that the scones were the best we had tasted in years. It would be fair to say that it would be hard to think of anything that could have improved on these scones.

We scored the tea:-

Ambiance and Presentation:- 4 A clean room with a nice atmosphere.
Jam and Cream:- 5 Quality and portion size
Scones:- 5 To dream about.
Tea:- 4 reasonable choice and hot water given without asking.
Service:- 4 Friendly counter Staff.

Overall:- 22/25

Cream tea on a bucket list.

Bucket lists are everywhere these days. I have made several over the years and I am a sucker for a book telling what I must see, do or experience before I quit this mortal coil.

Today it was the turn of 'Waitrose Weekend' the free newspaper published each week by Waitrose. Who had a list that was advertised as 'The Foodie Bucket List!'

Well number '15' was their attempt at a cream tea.

All I can say is how disappointing the attempt was. 

'Smother Cornish clotted cream on a fruit scone - there's no finer taste.'

Even as a lover of clotted cream I would be hard pushed to claim that a scone and cream was the pinnacle of fine taste.

Where is the jam!

Please Waitrose you are talking about a CREAM TEA! 

It's scone, cream and JAM!

Oh well back to planning that trip around the world to see that 1001 places I am missing out on.

Montacute House and the worlds worst pouring milk jug.

It is holiday time and we have been to the home of cream teas, the west country. 

The first cream tea we had was on the way down to Cornwall, at another National Trust property, Montacute House in Somerset.

The tea shop was in an outbuilding with a nice courtyard with seats outside. It was very wet while we arrived, so we sat in and ate, by the time we finished is was sunny. If the sun had been out earlier we would have sat out under the large umbrellas.

We ordered our tea and as usual the passenger had Earl Grey Tea and the driver had Ceylon. The teas were Taylor's and were in bags. The milk was served in the usual metal jug but this was a jug straight out of a joke shop. 

When the jug poured it ran down the side and dribbled off the bottom, tip it a bit more and it just dribbled down the side faster, after the first round of drinks we tried again usualy as a jug empties it gets easier to pour, but it still dribbled. Even when emptied all the way to the bottom it still dribbled. Never have I seen a jug that poured so badly. 

Apart from this the food was standard National Trust fare. The jam was Wilkin's and the cream was Roddas and both pre packed. Easy to portion manage, little waste and little in the way of any individual style. As we were sharing we had a scone each the passenger preferring plain and the driver fruit.

Service was friendly and the room clean. 

On the wall was a notice with what was claimed as the historic origins of the cream tea. 

I suspect that there are many conflicting ideas about how the cream tea came about.

We gave the cream tea the following marks.

Ambiance and Presentation:- 4 A clean room and we had the choice of which scones we wanted.
Jam and Cream:- 3 lost marks for limited choice of jam and pre packed cream.
Scones:- 3 good but nothing great.
Tea:- 3 reasonable choice but that milk jug!
Service:- 4 Friendly counter Staff.

Overall:- 17/25

Cornwall trip.

The passenger and I are just back from a trip down to Cornwall. Staying on a farm at the end of a long narrow lane about four miles from Lands End.
We had a great time and sampled five, yes five! cream teas. Well when I say 'we' sampled five cream teas I meant the driver sampled five and the passenger sampled three and a bit. Some of those roads are very twisty and turney and driving them in thick fog put the passenger of cream teas.

One of the farms on our lane was a Rodda's supplier

You can tell they are proud of their cream in Cornwall.

Seen in a window at Uppingham

A nice bit of promotional material in a window.

Petworth House Tea Shop, National Trust.

National Trust properties are always a guaranteed location for a cream tea. At Petworth house the restaurant is located in a large hall in the servants wing of the house. This wing also displays the kitchens of the house, and as always these are as interesting as the actual house itself.

The cream tea was an assemble it yourself tea. A large wicker basket with plain scones sat on the counter with a sign saying two scones, jam and cream for £4.90. Being picky we chose our scones from the basket and then looked for the jam. The options were Strawberry or Apricot in 28g jars from Wilkin of Tiptree, with only two types of jam to choose from it seemed a bit limited. Strawberry was chosen by both of us, as Apricot is a bit 'funky' for a cream tea.
We then moved up to the counter and were given tubs of Rodda's Clotted cream. The choice of tea was the usual,  And we chose an Earl Grey and and English Breakfast. These were both loose teas and were served in a Stump teapot. A nice detail and something I had never seen before. We also had a pot of water as top up.

We found a table and sat down.

The scones were good. I would hazard a guess that they were fresh that day and not frozen and defrosted. They were a bit hard but had a good texture and taste.

We gave marks as follows out of 5 in each category.

Ambiance and Presentation:- 3, we had to assemble ourselves, room was clean but a bit of a 'barn'
Jam and Cream:- 3, lost marks for limited choice of jam and pre packed clotted cream.
Scones:- 3, Good but nothing outstanding.
Tea:- 4, Liked the tea pots.
Service:- 2, Sadly not a great interaction with the counter staff.

Overall:-15/25

A good cream tea and about what we would expect from a National Trust restaurant.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to this new blog dedicated to that great English tradition of the Cream Tea.

Be it Kentish, Devon, Cornish, Old English or Olde English, whatever county or other adjective the provider choses to use. The Cream Tea is one of the great traditions of food in England.

This blog will be a chronicle of the cream teas that we sample in our travels around the country.