Morning and afternoon tea, I have discovered, are a 'thing' here.
When you visit with someone it is often over morning or afternoon tea and, it is quite often a scrumptious affair.
It's not just a hot drink and a rich tea biscuit, oh no, one can quite often find oneself confronted with at least two or three choices of sweet goodness - cake, slices, biscuits.... who knows, sometimes there are savoury options too.
It's an event.... a time to sit, chat, enjoy..... and I have embraced this ritual with great eagerness.
During our morning here at home, the children get their morning tea (in their case they don't get the sweet goodness.... unless you accept fruit as the sweet bit, which they don't, but they do get a plate filled with a snack none-the-less).
Now I was not a morning coffee drinker (unless I was going out for a morning coffee, which I also love to do!), I was always an after-lunch and after-dinner coffee drinker (I don't actually drink tea, never have - 'but you're English you have to drink tea' is often the response I hear to that statement!!) but I have changed!
I now like to have my morning 'tea' and a little sweet something just to celebrate the midway point between breakfast and lunch every day!
It's become a ritual ...... I like to sit on the sofa (or on the deck out back when the weather is warm) and have a bit of a break - just me, my cup of coffee (always in one of my favourite mugs) and a little taste of something yummy.
And as a Brucy-bonus on Saturday mornings I get to have morning tea with my lovely man.....
This morning as I made breakfast for the kiddles I also made some shortbread. You see, we had just finished up the biscuits I baked on Thursday so we needed something to go with our morning beverage - it would be wrong to have a drink without a little tasting of something to go with it.
I used the recipe found in my 1968 Good Housekeeping Cookbook and boy was the shortbread good..... crispy, buttery and just yum, yum, yum!
Evie, of course, helped with the rolling and cutting out.... can't be baking without her these days.
And incase you would like to make some scrummy shortbread for your morning tea here is the recipe:
5oz plain flour
1oz rice flour
2oz castor sugar
4 oz butter or margerine (I use a mix of both)
Beat the butter with a wooden spoon until creamy.
Beat in the castor sugar.
Sift in the flours into the butter/sugar mix and combine thoroughly finishing with your hands to gather it all together.
Roll it out to about quarter of an inch thick and then cut out biscuits (I use a fluted biscuit cutter)
Bake in the oven at 150 degrees for about 25 min until the edges are just beginning to brown..... DON'T OVERBAKE IT!
Leave to cool on a tray, pour yourself a cuppa (or pop the espresso machine on in my case) and enjoy.
