Remaking tea and biscuits

Short

Daniel Doherty, executive chef at Duck & Waffle, has the recipe to reimagine classic English dishes.

Part 4: remaking tea and biscuits

20th September 2014

Tea and biscuits is something very British, and very special, too. On a sad day, having a cuppa with a few Custard Creams is like getting a big hug. As wonderful as the classic is, I very much enjoyed remaking it using those tea and biscuit flavours in different formats: making some homemade Eccles cakes and an Earl Grey custard to dunk them in.

Eccles cakes and Earl Grey custard

Makes 8 small cakes

Eccles cakes
500g puff pastry, rolled out into squares the thickness of a pound coin and about 6cm long 30g butter, melted
150g soft brown sugar
120g currants
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 orange, zest and juice
Earl Grey custard
2 Earl Grey tea bags
150ml milk
150ml double cream
2 egg yolks
35g sugar

Eccles cakes

First, make the mixture by combining the butter, sugar, currants, spices, orange zest and juice, and mix well. Take a teaspoon of mixture and roll into a ball. Continue until you have 12 balls approximately 2cm in diameter.

Place a ball, flattened slightly, in the centre of the pastry.

Brush the sides of the pastry with milk, then turn up around the mix and seal.

Turn over and place on a lined baking sheet. Rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 180ºC/gas 4.

Take the cakes from the fridge. Make three slices in the top and brush with milk. Sprinkle with sugar and bake for approximately 20 minutes, until golden brown.

Earl Grey custard

Put the milk, cream and tea bags in a pan and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and allow to infuse for 30 minutes.

In a bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar. Meanwhile, bring the milk and cream back to the boil, then strain.

Slowly pour the milk and cream on to the yolk mix and stir well. Put back in a pan and heat gently until it thickens – taking care not to let it scramble or go lumpy. Strain into a bowl, placing a sheet of clingfilm over it to prevent a skin forming.


More in this series

Reinventing shepherd's pie
Reinterpreting meat and two veg
Redoing jellied eels


Republish

We want our stories to go far and wide; to be seen be as many people as possible, in as many outlets as possible.

Therefore, unless it says otherwise, copyright in the stories on The Long + Short belongs to Nesta and they are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

This allows you to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. This can be done for any purpose, including commercial use. You must, however, attribute the work to the original author and to The Long + Short, and include a link. You can also remix, transform and build upon the material as long as you indicate where changes have been made.

See more about the Creative Commons licence.

Images

Most of the images used on The Long + Short are copyright of the photographer or illustrator who made them so they are not available under Creative Commons, unless it says otherwise. You cannot use these images without the permission of the creator.

Contact

For more information about using our content, email us: [email protected]

HTML

HTML for the full article is below.