By Valerie Elliot For The Mail On Sunday 01:36 23 Apr 2017, updated 12:15 23 Apr 2017
- The Queen is an enthusiastic home baker and has collected her favourite recipes
- The book includes 39 of the most popular foods served at royal garden parties
- President Eisenhower loved The Queen's drop scones and asked for the recipe
Think baking royalty and one name inevitably springs to mind: Mary Berry.
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But it seems the former Great British Bake Off star has a surprising rival: Her Majesty the Queen.
For the Monarch is an enthusiastic home baker, whose favourite recipes are about to be published in a new cookbook.
Top of the list is one for drop scones, which she cooked for American President Dwight D. Eisenhower when he visited Balmoral in 1959. ‘Ike’ and his wife Mamie enjoyed the treats so much that he asked her for the recipe, and she obliged in a personal letter.
Next month that same recipe will have pride of place in the new book, Royal Teas, alongside 39 other recipes for the most popular foods served at Buckingham Palace garden parties.
In her letter to President Eisenhower, the Queen gave a recipe for enough drop scones, also known as Scotch pancakes, to feed 16 people. And she added a couple of personal tips, suggesting ‘I think the mixture needs a great deal of beating while making and shouldn’t stand about too long before cooking’, and: ‘I have also tried using golden syrup or treacle instead of only sugar and that can be very good, too.’
The Queen, aged 33 at the time and expecting her third child, Prince Andrew, made the scones on a griddle at Balmoral as a teatime snack.
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But Jacky Colliss Harvey from the Royal Collection Trust, which is publishing the new book, said: ‘We believe President Eisenhower liked them because they were close to American breakfast pancakes and they made him feel at home.’
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She added: ‘The idea for the book started with the garden parties and afternoon tea. We had a long list of recipes but had to weed them out if they were too complicated or ingredients too expensive or difficult to source.
‘Tea is the quintessential British meal. We still follow the tradition that savoury precedes sweet, and that wholesome is to be consumed before the indulgent, but the perfect tea table has to include a combination of both.’
How to make treats like a monarch
Her Majesty’s Drop Scones
1 free-range egg
2 tablespoons unrefined caster sugar
1 teaspoon unsalted butter, melted
250ml full-fat milk
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
240g plain flour
2.5 teaspoons baking powder
1½ teaspoons cream of tartar
100g clarified unsalted butter
In a bowl, sieve flour, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar and sugar. Add milk and egg, whisk until smooth then add warm melted butter.
Pass through a sieve to remove lumps. If necessary, thin with more milk. It should be a dropping consistency, thick enough to retain shape on a griddle.
Heat griddle (or non-stick frying pan) over medium heat, and grease with clarified butter. Using a spoon or ladle, pour batter on griddle.
Cook one side then flip with a palette knife to cook the other. Do not let them over-cook. Serve warm with butter and preserves.
Palace’s Perfect victoria sponge
Two, 20cm/8in cake tins
3 free-range eggs
150g unrefined caster sugar
150g unsalted butter, softened
150g self-raising flour, sieved
½ teaspoon of vanilla essence
For the buttercream:
150g unsalted butter, softened
220g icing sugar, sieved
¹/³ split vanilla pod
Preheat oven to 180C (350F, gas mark 4). Grease tins with butter and line bottom with baking paper.
In a bowl, cream sugar, vanilla essence and butter until light and fluffy. Add beaten eggs, a little at a time to avoid curdling. Fold sieved flour until combined.
Divide the mix evenly between tins and smooth. Place on the middle shelf of oven and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown and skewer comes out clean. Remove from oven, cool slightly before turning out on a wire rack.
For the buttercream, cream butter with sugar and seeds from split vanilla pod until pale and fluffy.
Once cakes have cooled, spread a layer of buttercream on top of the first cake, then add a thick layer of jam, before placing second cake on top of jam. Press down gently and dust top with icing sugar.
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The recipes in the book were selected by Royal chef Mark Flanagan and Royal pastry chef Kathryn Cuthbertson from the dishes regularly offered by the Queen at private functions and to the 30,000 annual guests at Buckingham Palace garden parties.
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They include recipes for carrot cake and another garden-party favourite, Victoria sponge, named after the Queen’s great-great-grandmother.
Mr Flanagan, who has worked for the Queen for 15 years, has previously said: ‘At any large event we are always conscious of trying to make sure we uphold people’s expectations when they come to Buckingham Palace. For a lot of people, it will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
‘Certainly from the kitchen side of things we try to encourage everybody to make sure nobody goes away saying, “Wasn’t it amazing… but the food wasn’t up to much” – that’s not what we’d like.’
Savoury recipes in the book, whose proceeds will help conserve artworks owned by the Queen, include brioche crayfish co*cktail buns, egg mayonnaise on toast points, wild mushroom vol-au-vents, quail scotch eggs and miniature game pies.
Meanwhile, sweet treats include Yorkshire rhubarb creme brulee tartlets, cherry madeleines and the poshest Jammie Dodgers most people will come across: sables aux confiture. More exclusive recipes from Royal Teas will be published in The Mail on Sunday’s You magazine on May 7 – the day before the book is published, priced £14.95, or £12.95 via the Royal Collection Trust.
