Easter Afternoon Tea

Ceramic Cake Plate by Rice

My sister had a habit of keeping her Easter eggs for months until the chocolate had lost it's sheen and started to go white by being left on the window ledge. She'd eat a small and controlled amount each day. Mine went by the time we got to the end of Easter day and I felt queasy from the sugar overload, but at least it didn't go off. Time may pass but I've never learnt much in the way of self control, so although I love baking, I like to have people to ply with the finished product else I'll only eat it all myself. With the longer days and bank holiday weekends, Easter seems the perfect time to have people over for tea, occasionally leading to G and T. Here are a couple of Easter afternoon tea recipes - one sweet, one savoury - both perfect for sharing.

Easter biscuits are traditional particularly in the West Country where we are based. An alternative serving suggestion might be with a picnic involving lashings of cider and a door stop of cheddar cheese.

Cheese scones

100g butter

400g self raising flour

75g cheese (mature cheddar or half mature cheddar half parmesan for some extra kick)

250ml milk

3/4 level teaspoon cayenne pepper

Crumb together the butter, flour and cayenne with your finger tips until well combined. Mix in the cheese.

Add the milk and bring together into a soft dough with your fingertips. I usually try and use one hand whilst pouring in the milk with the other as you may need a little more or less depending.

Lightly flour the surface and roll out to 2-3 cm thick. Cut out the scones with a 2.5 inch / 6cm cutter. If you want a glossy finish on the scones you can brush milk over the top with a pastry brush.  

Place on a lightly greased tray and bake for 12-15 minutes at 220 degrees centigrade. Makes around 15 scones.

Easter Biscuits

100g butter

75g caster sugar plus extra for decorating

1 egg
200g plain white flour
1/2 teaspoon ground mixed spice
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

50g currants
15g chopped mixed peel

15-30ml of brandy or milk

Cream together the butter and caster sugar with an electric whisk or a wooden spoon if you want arms like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Keep going until the colour starts to lighten and they are a little fluffy. Separate the egg and whisk in the yolk. Whisk up the white a bit and set aside with a pastry brush at the ready.

Sift and fold in the flour and spices, then stir in the fruit.

Mix in the brandy or milk (I'd recommend the brandy). I usually use the finger tips of one hand whilst pouring with the other so I can feel when the mix becomes wet enough to be a workable dough.

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured work surface to about 5mm thick and cut out the biscuits with a fluted cutter - I used quite a small one although traditionally Easter biscuits are fairly large.

Bake on a lightly greased tray at 200 degrees for 10 minutes then take them out of the oven and brush over the egg white and lightly sprinkle with caster sugar. I found it helps to do a few biscuits at a time so the egg doesn't set from the warmth before you get the sugar on there. You also want to be careful not to brush the egg on too thickly.

Finally, return to the oven for 5 more minutes then remove and cool on a wire rack. 

Tray, Jug and Ceramic Two-tone Cup by Rice

We have a Winner

Thanks to everyone who entered our competition to win a set of Andrea Letterie melamine - it was a really popular competition and all the entrants came up with some great summer food idea. The winner was picked entirely at random from the entrants. Congratulations to Alissa Hankin from Southampton - your prize is on its way!

One theme stuck out from the entries seemed to be strawberries, cream and meringues. Being not far from the strawberry farms in the cheddar valley we can't help but agree that the strawberry is one of the highlights of the British summer. One of my other favourite ideas included a delicious sounding chickpea, feta, caramelised onion and coriander salad - sounds right up my street for a hot summers day. A few people also mentioned gooseberries - we used to have great bushes of gooseberries when we were kids and they got turned into jam, ice cream and fools. I love them!

As a small consolation prize we have a 10% discount code of MyGiveaway which can be used on our site in the basket page until Sunday 13th. And congratulations again to Alissa on her win!

Andrea Letterie from Rice DK - Competition Time!

It's competition time, folks!

NB - The competition is now closed!

Our favourite Danish brand Rice has launched this fab new range of melamine with prints by Dutch illustrator Andrea Letterie and we're so excited about it that we've decided to give a set away to one lucky fan. We're thinking ahead to picnic season here and we want your ideas for what you might pack up for the park to serve on your beautiful new tableware. So here's a chance to win over £100 worth of the beautiful melamine.

Andrea takes the inspiration for her artwork from everyday things - whether it's her collection of tea cups, her dog, or a bunch of colourful flowers from the garden. It's this love of bold, bright colour and simple pleasures which makes the collaboration with Rice DK such a good fit. As well as their fun and exciting design, we've always loved Rice for their ethical outlook, being one of the smallest companies ever to achieve Social Accountability 8000 accreditation, and it seems like a love of the simple things in life goes hand in hand with care and commitment to others.

Competition deadline: Midnight on 6th April 2014

How to win!

In case you hadn't noticed, we're very keen on food at fig1.co.uk. With the signs of spring firmly shooting up everywhere, we're thinking about picnics, barbecues and alfresco lunches - in fact, we rarely think about anything

else. So to help feed our obsession, give us some ideas of your favourite summer foods, either in a comment on this blog or on our Facebook page. Make it as simple or complicated as you like - go to town with a full recipe or a link to your blog, or just a quick word or two! We're looking forward to your ideas, but the winner will simply be picked at random with no judgement call so just a few words is fine if you are short of time. If you enter on Facebook we'd also like you to share the post about this competition - it helps share the fun!

This competition is only open to UK residents and shipping is to UK addresses only - we're a small UK focused company and our reach doesn't yet stretch beyond! Sorry to anyone outside of the UK!

We then have a simple form for you to fill in on Survey Monkey - this is just so we have details to inform people of the results - we'll use it to send one email to let you know if you have won or not, and we need the address so we can send the prize to the winner, but we will not store these details after the competition - you'll have to make sure you are on our mailing list separately if you want to receive future information from us by subscribing using the link on the bottom left of our home page at www.fig1.co.uk.

In Summary, to enter:

• Comment on this blog OR comment and share on the competition post on our Facebook page with a summer food idea
• Complete the form on Survey Monkey
• Deadline is Midnight on Sunday 6th April 2014
• Winners will be informed on Monday 7th April 2014
• UK entrants only

What you can win!

You can win a set of four dinner plates, cups and side plates with Andrea Letterie prints, an Andrea Letterie candle holder and one of these pretty glass bottle vases by Rice DK - worth over £100.

Good luck!

Rhubarb Compote and Pistachio Biscuits served with Saffron and Cardamom Cream

Square Bottle Vase by Rice

Bold, bright, cheap but beautiful and fresh from Cornwall. No, I am not immodestly talking myself up, newly
returned from our winter break to the far south west, but refer rather to a bunch of daffodils I've just bought from the green grocers. A customer recently commented on how she likes to take pleasure in small things whenever she can. If that is the happiest way to live life - and I think it might be - then the promises of spring beginning to show everywhere must be making her a very happy woman.

I think my Mum's excitement at seeing the first daffodils in the garden and picking some for the table has always left me with a particular fondness for the flowers and so, thinking forward to Mother's Day, I've been letting my imagination loose on my childhood to help dream up a recipe full of the colours and tastes of spring. My Grandmother on my Dad's side was Cornish so the almost indescribably unique taste of saffron she used to use in her baking also provokes particularly powerful maternal memories for me. There is something about those early formed memories which stay with you in vision and smell, taste and texture more than in words and description. Trying to dredge up those thoughts of spring and childhood, my mind explores the garden we grow up in from a child's height eye: the bank of daffodils, the towering stems of rhubarb and the pea shoots amongst their netting which would grow soon enough into giant, yet
delicate and abundant plants.

Candle holder by Rice

It's partly these colours and textures which have inspired me to come up with this dish and, although it is actually quite sophisticated, I wanted to present it in a fun way - again, a homage to baking at home with Mum or Gran, when decorating things up would be so much part of the fun.

The below quantities serve 4, with maybe a few biscuits left spare. It is quite a rich desert so you don't need too much.

Rhubarb Compot

Ingredients

100g sugar

70ml water

4 stems of Rhubarb, cut unto 2 inch lengths

Rhubarb is just coming into season at the moment. The early stems are often the forced ones, but soon it will be in full flow. It tends very tender this young so I don't bother to take off the outer skin, which becomes stringy later in the season. Put the water and sugar in the pan. Bring to the boil. Add the rhubarb and gently simmer for 5 minutes or enough time to allow the rhubarb to soften without going completely to mush. Set aside to cool.

Saffron and Cardamom Cream

Ingredients

300ml Double Cream

300ml Condensed Milk

20 Green Cardamom Pods

20 Strands of Saffron

Zest and Juice of 2 Lemons

The taste of this part of the dish is partly inspired by the Indian ice cream "kulfi" - made using condensed milk
and often subtly spiced. It is set in the same way as lemon posset, by the acidity of the lemon juice.  The lemon zest and saffron give this part it's spring yellow colour.

Bring the double cream, condensed milk, cardamom pods (lightly crushed to release their flavour) and saffron slowly to a gentle boil in a pan, stirring and being careful not to let it boil over. Simmer gently for 3 minutes, add the lemon zest then leave to cool and infuse. After 10 minutes, pick out the cardamom pods from the cream. Now add the juice of the lemons and stir thoroughly. The cream mix should instantly thicken when you add the juice. 

Depending on how you want to serve it, you can either add a spoon of the rhubarb to the bottom of a glass or coffee cup now, then put the cream over the top in individual portions and leave it all to set in the fridge, or leave the cream for 2-3 hours in the fridge as it is and then pipe it or spoon it onto the desserts at the end.

Pistachio Biscuits

Ingredients

190g Shelled Pistachios

100g Ground Almonds

120g Caster Sugar

2 medium egg whites

Preheat oven to 170 centigrade. Toast the pistachios for 10 minutes to bring out their flavour. In the meantime put all the other ingredients in a bowl. I also added a drop of green food colouring as I was feeling particularly colourful.

Put half the toasted pistachios in the food processor and blend down finely. Add to the other ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Roughly chop the rest of the pistachios. Spread them out on a lined baking tray or silicone sheet. Now
spoon, pipe or use wet finger tips to add small balls of the biscuit mix to the tray. It is quite sticky and difficult to handle so I find the piping bag easiest. Having the chopped nuts already spread out like this it makes rolling the balls of mix in them easier - as they pick up the chopped nuts they become more handleable for
shaping. You should have enough mix for about 10 small biscuits.

Bake for 14 minutes. They should remain quite soft and chewy in the middle, so don't bake them until they are solid. When they are done, use a pallet knife to gently remove them from the tray and place on a cooling rack.

Acacia Chopping Board by House Doctor

Presenting the Dish

I wanted to go for an ice cream sundae look, so I carefully cut the biscuits down the centre and piped some of the cream in it. I then added a crumbled biscuit to the bottom of the cup, soaked it with some of the rhubarb juice and then piped in some of the cream, followed by rhubarb, then cream, so it was a mixed bag of surprises. Finally I topped it with some piped whipped cream, some chopped puts and a little lemon zest. Served with a biscuit on the side. I'm sure you can let your own imagination run wild.

Pictures: presented on Rice "Japanese Style" Melamine ... although we think it is more Ice Cream Parlour. Maybe a recipe for Green Tea Ice Cream next??

Coming Soon....

We're having a give away of some of the new beautiful Andrea Letterie illustrated melamine plates from Rice. We love this new range. We should be launching the competition in our news letter on Monday - simply go to our website www.fig1.co.uk and fill in the form on the bottom left of the page to subscribe to our mailing list.

Give away coming soon....