Found: Wegmans specialty cheese case
Cost: $7.99 for 6-ounce jar
Oh, we coarse Americans, spreading our muffins, toast and (gasp) scones with plain old butter; eating strawberry shortcakes with barely-there, flavorless whipped whiteness that melts in moments to nothing at all. We've not lived a day in which we've known the luxurious creaminess of clotted cream.
Clotted what? What's clotted cream? Well, if it sounds to you like a medical problem, you could also call it “Devonshire cream” or “Cornish cream," according to "Curious Cuisiniere: Homemade Clotted Cream" which you can find at www.curiouscuisiniere.com/clotted-cream. But I get ahead of myself.
The stuff is a staple at a high English tea, where it is spread on scones. I will be spreading it on every bread product I consume until my precious jar is empty. I'm talking cinnamon raisin bread, maybe a bagel, an English muffin perhaps, but definitely on scones. Is it tea time yet?
Clotted cream has the consistency of softened cream cheese, but it tastes much more subtle— like the finest whipped butter you can imagine. It's a thick, off-white substance that's three days in the making, starting from unpasteurized heavy cream. You pour the cream into a shallow dish to the depths of 2 inches at most. You want a lot of surface area. Then it's heated in the oven at 180 degrees for 12 hours to separate the fat from the milk. The fat comes to the top and gathers into lumps or "clots." Then it's cooled over eight hours and you separate the liquid from the solid. The solid is your clotted cream.
You can actually make it yourself. There are recipes all over the Internet. You just need to find cream that has not been ultra-pasteurized to start with. I'm not sure where to find that.
Clotted cream is utterly amazing on English scones (see recipe, 2D), especially when paired with the Queen's own favoriteTiptree Strawberry Preserve from Wilkin & Sons (Amazon, $7.99 for a 12-ounce jar). (Yes, I got some of that, too. Come on, are we celebrating the Brits or what?)
So if you're going to wave the Union Jack and say "God save the queen" and all this week, go and find yourself a bit of clotted cream for your scones as well.
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