British-American Teatime Adventure

“What is the difference between British scones and American buttermilk biscuits?” We must have asked this question at least half a dozen times in the past couple weeks. Eggs? Butter? Amount of flour? Folding? Shape? Rising agents?

Ultimately the answer didn’t matter as we gobbled Guillaume’s high-altitude buttermilk biscuits shaped like mini scones and my assortment of tiny crustless tea sandwiches. We’d waited long enough. Not just to eat, but to see Meghan and Harry get married. Although the latter was really just an excuse to make all this food.

We were so caffeinated from morning coffee that we skipped the tea part of teatime. There was nothing polite about how quickly we ate, either. Our spread included Marcona almonds, a bowl of fresh strawberries, fresh blueberries, and Pim’s orange cookies. Fully restored, we could return to fast-forwarding through time-filler interviews and get to the good stuff.

I’m a sucker for high tea. Maybe it’s all those BBC costume dramas I’ve watched since childhood. Maybe it’s my mom, who knows the restorative power of hot tea on a cold, dreary day. While my folks were traveling through Ireland recently, my mom picked up a couple recipes for scones.

“The lady making the scones said buttermilk is KEY to making them soft,” she wrote, attaching a scan. But I didn’t know how to convert it for high altitude. My high-altitude baking cookbook’s basic scone recipe didn’t mention buttermilk.

We’d had success with buttermilk biscuits from Mountain Mama Cooks, adding slightly more salt and adapting the technique to a handheld pastry cutter. Guillaume bravely donned the apron.

Meanwhile, I poached the chicken breasts and made a curried chicken salad for one of three tea sandwich types inspired by Allrecipes for the chicken, Serious Eats for the smoked salmon and rolling pin technique, and Genius Recipes for the cucumber and cream cheese base.

Below are several recipes perfect for a British-American high tea mash-up, a fancy celebration, or a tasty lunch for sustained TV viewing on a rainy Saturday afternoon. With some creative substitutions, I’m sure you can make the sandwiches gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian, or vegan.

High-Altitude Biscuits

Makes 32 small triangles or 12 – 18 regular round biscuits

4 C. flour (500g)
2 Tbsp. baking powder
¾ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 C. (2 sticks) cold, unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1½ C. buttermilk, cold

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Whisk dry ingredients together in a large glass mixing bowl.

Add cold butter chunks to the mixing bowl. Use a pastry cutter to cut the butter into the dry ingredients, pushing straight down repeatedly, knocking stuck butter off with a knife, until the butter is in pea size pieces. Be careful not to over-mix.

Pour the buttermilk into the bowl and, using a wooden spoon or hard spatula, incorporate the buttermilk into the butter-flour mixture just until it's mixed through. Avoid overworking the dough.

Lightly flour a clean, hard surface and pour the dough out. Guillaume used a silicone pastry mat. Kelley from Mountain Mama Cooks advises that the dough should want to fall apart. This is fine.

Using a bench scraper or your hand, begin collecting the dough and shaping it into a rectangle. Roll the dough out with a rolling pin until it’s about ½ inch thick.

Using the bench scraper or edge of the mat, lift up one end of the dough and fold it back on itself. Roll the dough out again to ¾ inch thick. Fold the dough back on itself again and roll out to 1 inch thick.

Cut the biscuits into 4 horizontal strips using the bench scraper or a large knife. Then cut 4 vertical strips. Slice through each square at an angle to form two triangles per square. Alternatively, use a biscuit-cutter or floured water glass to make circles.

Place the biscuits about 1-inch apart on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake about 10 – 12 minutes until golden and puffy. We added about 4 more minutes to the bake time for ours. Let them cool slightly before serving.

Guillaume says he thinks this recipe could safely be cut in half if you want to make fewer biscuits.

We ate them with lemon curd and assorted jams. Clotted cream is traditional with scones, but these biscuits were so soft and buttery, they didn’t need any.

Tea Sandwiches

Makes a minimum of 12 tiny sandwiches, four of each kind.

Curried chicken salad:
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, about 1 lb. total, poached and diced
¼ C. raisins
1 stalk celery, diced
¼ C. pecans, chopped
~2 Tbsp. fresh chives, minced or cut with scissors
heaping ½ C. mayonnaise or more to taste
Fresh lemon juice
¾ tsp. curry powder
½ small tart apple (see prep instructions below)

The rest:
1 loaf white sandwich bread, sliced
4 oz. smoked salmon slices
1 English cucumber
4 oz. plain cream cheese, softened
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1 small bunch fresh dill, minced, about 1 Tbsp.
Garlic salt
Black pepper
1 Tbsp. capers, roughly chopped
couple butter lettuce pieces, rinsed and dried

Curried chicken salad assembly
Poach 2 high-quality boneless skinless chicken breasts in simmering water with salt and aromatics until they’re fully cooked. I used this recipe as a guideline, skipping the parsley, adding more lemon, putting about half the salt in, and replacing the onion piece with a full shallot. You can add the cut chicken back to cook longer if it’s still pink in the middle.

Allow the chicken to cool for 20 minutes, then refrigerate them in a covered bowl for at least another 20 minutes. Dice the chicken. Prep the celery and pecans.

In a large glass mixing bowl, add the diced chicken, raisins, celery, pecans, and minced chives. In a separate small bowl, mix together the mayonnaise, lemon juice, curry powder, and a sprinkle of salt. Fold the mayonnaise mixture into the chicken mixture; stir to coat. Cut the apple in half, remove the core, dice leaving the skin on, and add it to the salad mixture. Can add more mayo or salt to taste. Cover and refrigerate salad until ready to serve.

In a small bowl, mix together the softened cream cheese with around 1 Tbsp. of minced fresh dill, freshly ground pepper, a sprinkle of garlic salt, and a squeeze of lemon juice. Adjust the seasonings to taste.

Remove any plastic wrap from the English cucumber and rinse the cucumber. Cut off the very end. Then slice about 1 inch or so of it on a mandoline or cut with a very sharp knife to form almost translucent thin slices. Set aside.

Roughly chop the capers on a cutting board.

Remove the crusts from 6 slices of bread with a sharp knife, and use a rolling pin to gently flatten each slice.

Sandwich assembly
Chicken: Put a leaf of butter lettuce on one slice, add enough of the chicken salad to cover it, and top with another slice of bread. Press down gently and then cut it into quarters with a sharp knife.

Cucumber: Spread a thin layer of the cream cheese on 1 bread slice. Layer on several cucumber slices. Add a thin layer of cream cheese to a second slice and then put this on top of the cucumbers with the cream cheese side facing down. Cut into quarters with a clean, sharp knife.

Salmon: Spread a thin layer of cream cheese on 1 bread slice. Top with the chopped capers followed by a layer of smoked salmon slices. Add a thin cream cheese layer to a second slice and put that on top with the cream cheese facing down. Slice into quarters with a clean, sharp knife.

Serve the sandwiches on a platter. The chicken salad is also great on lettuce with tomato slices for a warm-weather meal or in a regular-sized sandwich.

Doilies, white gloves, fascinator hats, and dainty nibbling all entirely optional.