Stokes Sauces: Baking - a very British pastime

A kitchen full of flour and fun

http://www.stokessauces.co.uk/category/jams-and-marmalades

I'm sure everybody has childhood memories of kitchens full of mixing bowls, wooden spoons and packets of flour. My jumper would be covered in a white powdery dusting as my Aunt gave me a bowl to clean.

Luxury was to lick my fingers clean of their coating of creamy sweet cake mix.

Now, celebrities and talented amateurs compete on the telly, baking off against each other for coveted awards and their own TV fame.

Whatever your memories and however high your competitive aspirations, baking day is a family day at Stokes.

So, bakers, are you ready - let's bake

Scones are the quintessential essence of an English tea. How do you fill yours ... jam first or cream first?

Please let us know.

To make easy peasy scones...

You'll need:

225 g of self raising flour
a pinch of salt
55 g of butter
25 g of caster sugar
150 ml of milk
1 egg

Here's how:

Twist a pinch of salt into the flour and rub in the butter. Beat the sugar in with a wooden spoon, then the milk until you have a soft dough.

Knead it gently on a floured work surface and work it until it's about 2 cm thick. Cut out 5 cm rounds and place them on a lightly greased baking sheet.

Brush the tops with a beaten egg and bake for up to 15 minutes on a medium high heat until they have risen and the tops have a golden sheen.

For the filling you will need clotted cream and one (or more) of these:

Stokes jam is special jam - here's why

Traditional jam recipes are simple but often time consuming, using equal quantities of fruit and sugar. Commercial producers can use as little as 350g of fruit per kilo with some jams using even less fruits and more additives and flavouring. Water and extra sugar are added to create the ‘jam effect’. ‘Extra’ jam has a legal minimum requirement of 450g of fruit per kilo.

Stokes meets the minimum and more with our Strawberry, Raspberry and Blackcurrant extra jams The blackcurrant jam has 510g per kilo – 51% delicious fruit as traditionally our grandparents would have made it.

In the Old Stables at Rendlesham, knowing eyes watch over slow cooking blackcurrants, as they simmer, waiting for that very fine line between ‘perfect’ and ‘oops’.

The staff in the kitchens here have an enviable expertise and are as passionate about their jams, preserves, relishes and sauces as we all are.

But it’s not just the amount of fruit.

Use 50% poor quality blackcurrants and you can only create poor jam. Stokes go to uncompromising lengths to make sure the blackcurrants we use have that signature juicy sweet / tart flavour; the raspberries are rich, sweet and luscious; and the strawberries reflect natures succulent fruit with delicious keynotes of Wimbledon.

We use unrefined cane sugar, which is a typical artisan sugar. Produced in smaller batches, it is less processed and retains all or most of the cane molasses around the sugar crystals. This natural sweetness and additional depth of flavour cook well with the extra fruit to give the deeply flavoursome jams we love to deliver.