Earl Grey Scones with Strawberry Lavender Jam

You know those moments where you just can’t find the motivation, drive, and let’s face it, energy to do things you know you should be doing or want to be doing?

Yeah, well I’ve been having one of those for like 3 months now.

I don’t know what it is but since March I’ve probably attempted to write a travel blog post, numerous recipes, a monthly favourites post, and even attempted to film a couple vlogs… yet, none of them have happened.

I blame going on holiday for totally messing up my normal routine. I also blame Netflix. (Daredevil. Am I right?!) Though, when it comes down to it, I guess I just got hit with a touch of the lazys. *wide-eyed face with blushing cheeks emoji*

So, what broke my lazy streak you ask?

Scones.

Recently my work colleagues and I decided to indulge in a spot of cream tea one day during work. We’re British, it happens.

We bought ourselves the scones, the strawberry jam, the clotted cream… It was all going so swimmingly till we sat down to eat, and then we became divided. The result of which being a ridiculous ongoing debate between me and my colleagues.

So, now I’m asking you… do you jam first, or do you cream first?

Not a euphemism. I’m being totally serious.

See, I take the Cornish approach of spreading the jam first, then dolloping a generous amount of clotted cream on top. It just makes sense to me. Jam is made for spreading right?

My colleagues however take the Devonshire approach of dolloping the cream first then topping with jam… so it looks pretty. Yeah, I don’t get it.

So I decided to blog about it.

Earl Grey Scones with Strawberry Lavender Jam.

First I made the jam.

I steeped the lavender in 50ml boiling water for 10 minutes. I then washed and cut the strawbs, added the preserving sugar, lime juice and lavender water into a medium saucepan.

I brought this to the boil over a medium heat, stirring constantly. I let this bubble for approx 10 minutes till it became a thick jam consistency. Basically when it was thick enough to come away from the bottom of the pan when I was stirring.

I removed the pan from the heat, added the orange juice and left it to cool. Then I poured the jam into a sterilised jar (washed with hot water and washing up liquid, and left to dry in a hot oven).

For the scones I started by brewing one earl grey tea bag in 50ml of boiling water for about 3 minutes.

I then ground the contents of 2 further earl grey tea bags into a fine powder using a pestle and mortar.

I combined the the flour, baking powder, ground tea leaves and sugar in a large bowl.

I then rubbed the cold cubed butter into the dry ingredients using my fingertips till I got a coarse breadcrumb texture.

I added the beaten eggs, 1 tablespoon of the brewed earl grey tea, and the buttermilk to the dry ingredients and mixed this together to form a sticky dough.

I dumped this onto a floured surface and kneaded until it formed a smooth pillowy dough, adding a little flour to help it along.

I rolled this out to about 1 inch thickness, then cut out 12 rounds of a 5cm diameter.

I placed these onto a lined baking sheet, brushed the tops with beaten egg, then baked for 12-15 minutes at 200°C till the tops were golden.

Serve warm with the jam and some clotted cream. Jam first.