How to Make Traditional English Scones!

As part of Tampere Day 2018, the Tampere Finn-Brits hosted a series of six demonstrations on How To Make Traditional English Scones! in the Lecture Room of the Laikku cultural centre, Keskustori, between 14:30-18:00.

The demonstrations were conducted by our very own Tampere Finn-Brits master baker Valerie Kalves, whose scones recipe (PDF) is available online and was provided in print during the event. The demonstrations were open to the public, starting every 30 minutes between 14:30 and 17:30, without cost to attend or need to reserve a place.

In addition to learning how to make scones, the audience was also able to eat them, while enjoying a traditional English Cream Tea with fresh scones, cream and jam for €5, or a full Afternoon Tea including cucumber sandwiches as well as scones, cream and jam for €7, in the Laikku Café between 2pm and 6pm. Raw scones prepared during the demonstrations were taken to the Café kitchen for baking and serving, supplementing the Café’s scone variation. The Taster Verdict was clear: Valerie’s scones sold out immediately after each baking!

The Tampere Day scones demonstration was a resounding success. A standing-room-only audience was waiting eagerly outside the Lecture Room for the first session to begin, and new audiences flowed in for each successive session, despite the many other appealing Tampere Day events within Laikku as well as in the courtyard and Central Square outside.

All enjoyed Valerie’s detailed narration of the preparation of her scones recipe (PDF), and many anecdotes from her family baking experiences while growing up with eight siblings in England, as well as more recent anecdotes from her own kitchen in Finland. There was much chuckling at the story illustrating the need to distinguish between Fahrenheit and Celsius settings when leaving one’s oven on overnight, as well as the significance of using proper baking and kitchen utensils (… if you stir with a knife, you stir up strife! …), and, importantly, where one can obtain these utensils in Finland!

There were also many questions and comments from the audiences concerning options for making one’s own clotted cream and how to find the ‘right’ bread for cucumber sandwiches in Finland. Everyone went home feeling they had learned things that were going to be useful.

The Finn-Brit Tampere Day event, now almost a ‘tradition’ after last year’s equally successful Afternoon Tea with Nick Hennessey, was an optimal kickoff for the many events to come during the Tampere Finn-Brits’ 2018-2019 programme.

Would you like to know about all Tampere Finn-Brit activities? E-mail us at TampereFinnBrits@gmail.com with “New” as the subject and your name and address in the note; we will be pleased to add you to our mailing list!