During my duology research, I had a hankering for a scone with clotted cream. I fell in love with them while in Ireland. The scones are just a basic biscuit. You can find the link to the recipe here at TastesBetterFromScratch. It was so easy, and they came out wonderful the first time. Now on to what should have been easy but was anything but, the wonderfully creamy clotted cream.
How do modern women make traditional clotted cream? I’m about to tell you how. Keep in mind this was smack dab in the middle of mandatory quarantining, so I couldn’t get any farm-fresh unpasteurized double heavy cream. Instead, I used two pints of heavy cream from the grocery store. Make sure that your carton or bottle of cream is not “ultra-pasteurized.” That’s key.
Now, here’s the tricky part. The cream has to be headed at a low temperature for a very long time. Since it’s winter, and our gas bill is already crazy out of control, leaving it in a 175-degree oven for 12 hours wasn’t the most economical way to make it, so I had to reconsider.
Ah Hah! I thought. The crockpot!
What I did was keep it on low all night long, 12 hours at low will give you a darkened clotted cream that will just taste burnt. Don’t do that. It stinks up the whole house.
Follow these simple directions to do it right:
Ingredients
4 cups of heavy cream
Step One:
Pour heavy cream into the crockpot, cover with the lid. Use a kitchen towel between the pot and the lid, this will suck up some of the extra moisture.
Step Two:
Turn the crockpot on “Keep Warm” not low, not medium, definitely not high. You want the lowest setting.
Step Three:
Wait…and when I say wait, I am talking binge a whole season, read a trilogy, clean the closets…all of them while your cream sits on keep warm for 12 hours. Seriously 12 hours.
Step Four:
Now that you really want to glob some of that creamy goodness onto a scone, there’s more waiting involved. In this step, take the cover off of the crockpot, change the towel, make sure it’s not touching the cooked cream, and let sit until it’s room temperature.
Step Five:
Do you get to eat it now? No, sorry. At this point, take the towel away and put the crockpot into the refrigerator overnight. 10-12 hours.
Step Six:
The final step. You are going to peel off the skin, the thickened cream can be scraped off of the skin, gently, of course, the skin is delicate. Put the clotted cream into its own container and slap some of it on a scone, a dot of preserves, or jelly and you are good to go.
Any leftover liquid in the bottom of the crockpot is perfect for putting over oatmeal.
Let me know how you get on if you try to make your own batch of clotted cream.
