Vegan Cream Tea

Hello guys,

It's June, it's strawberry time! (Well at least in Germany)

And there a two things I really love tea time and strawberries, so you might imagine how excited I am to finally be able to eat fresh strawberries again! While living in England I felt desperately in love with afternoon tea. I lived close to London, but in the countryside, where you find a LOT of old, posh and beautiful hotels and apparently this is where you can eat the most amazing afternoon teas EVER! But sometimes a cream tea (just the scones, clotted cream and jam) is just as great. I simply love the combo of those three beauties but however clotted cream is everything but defenitly NOT lactose-free, as I couldn't imagine living without it, I went to my little kitchen and created a vegan one. And why leaving the kitchen before making vegan scones too? As those are, traditionally, made with butter and as we all know this as well isn't lactose free. I hope you'll enjoy my little vegan cream tea.

Announcement: Before we start with this month's recipe, I wanted to give you a little teaser for next month's recipe, as this will be quite different to all the former post. I don't to take too much away, but I'll start with a little special, about stories, grandmas and cooking. NO, I will not cook grandmas. Furthermore *fingers crossed* next month's post will be uploaded in English and German. I'm very excited! Now, let's get back to business.

Today's piece of happiness:

All you need: (for approx. 10 small scones)

Clotted Cream:

1 can of coconut milk (~400 ml)

2 tbsp coconut oil (room temperature)

10 gr. vanilla sugar

Scones:

300 gr. flour

3 tbsp baking powder

115 gr. margarine

55 gr. sugar

1 pinch of salt

150 ml plant milk (I used almond milk)

1 tbsp apple vinegar

1 hand of cranberries

1 hand of raisins (saying this, I have quite small hands, so maybe add a little less than this; by the way, if you're not into those things, plain scones are very nice as well)

Fresh strawberry"jam":

400 gr. fresh strawberries

Agave syrup (or any other honey alternative, or, if you eat animal products, honey) to taste

Who can spot Olaf? ;)

1. Step:

1 hour before starting with the rest, but your coconut can in the freezer.

2. Step:

Clotted Cream-time: Take the coconut can out of the freezer and place the coconut cream (not the watery bit) in a bowl, add the coconut oil and the vanilla sugar, mix it and place the bowl in the fridge.

3. Step:

Scone-time: Add the vinegar to the milk.

Preheat the oven to 180 degree Celsius.

Mix the flour, the baking powder, the salt and the sugar. Now add the magarine step by step (I did it in five steps). In the end it should look more or less like this:

Next you add the vinegar milk to the flour mix. After this it's time to add the raisins and cranberries.

Put a little flour on the clean counter.

Put the dough on the floured counter and roll it out (it should be approx. 3 cm/1 inch thick. By now it should look about like this:

Time to cut those scones! Take a glass, I decided to go for a smaller glass, as I wanted to have more but smaller scones.

Put a baking sheet on the baking tray and place the cut-out scones on it.

Put the baking tray in the preheated oven and bake the scones for approximately 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 100 degrees Celsius and let them bake for another 5 to 8 minutes.

4. Step:

Strawberry-time: Wash the strawberries, slice them up and place them in a bowl. Now you only have to add the agave syrup (or what ever you choose to use). Put the bowl in the fridge until you serve the scones.

5. Step:

Serving-time: Serve it however you like, I sliced the scone up, put clotted cream on one side and the strawberries on the other side.