Savory Tea Biscuits

I rarely make these, or any other bread, since I'm not eating flour.  But, they are still very easy to make, they just need to be eaten soon after they are baked.  You can freeze them, but you'll need to toast them after they thaw.  I prefer savory biscuits, but if you like the sweet ones, just add 3 Tbsp sugar to the dry ingredients and substitute currants or fruit for the meat/veg/cheese.  Just keep the ratios similar.
These tea biscuits are made with egg, which means they last about 2 or three days instead of just one.
 Heat oven to 425.

2 cups flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt (only if using unsalted butter)
1/4 tsp baking soda

Stir above ingredients together, then grate in:
1/4 cup butter, very cold, or frozen.
and stir until combined and not clumpy.

Combine
1/2 cup chopped, steamed broccoli florets
1/2 cup chopped ham
1/2 cup grated cheese (old cheddar or your similar favourite)
1/2 cup plain yogurt (or sour cream if you prefer)
1 egg slightly beaten

Finally, stir wet and dry ingredients together, mix with hands a little to form dough, dump out onto lightly floured surface, roll to 1/2" thickness, shape as desired (rounds or wedges).

Brush surface with milk.
Bake for about 10 minutes.  You want them golden brown.

Sweet Tea Biscuits:

 I cup butter, (2 sticks) frozen, coursely grated, dust with flour to prevent sticking.
Whisk together:
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup sour cream (or plain, unsweetened)

Stir together
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (10 ounces)
1/2 cup sugar (3 1/2 ounces)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon table salt 
1 tsp grated lemon zest (optional)
Add your frozen grated butter to this and mix until blended.  Don't let the butter melt.

Stir wet and dry ingredients together until just, just barely mixed.  It will still be clumpy.  Dump out onto lightly dusted surface and knead a few times until dough is just sticking together.  Keep your hands lightly floured.  the key is to touch this stuff as little as possible.  Roll out to about 1/2" thick (flour your roller), fold lightly together and pop back into fridge for 5 minutes.  (Now's a good time to turn your oven on and clean up the mess a little.

Roll out again to about 1/2" thick.  Okay.  So, if you want to add any little treats - currants are traditional (but you can use red currents, raisins, blueberries, small bits of dried fruits, just not chocolate chips which are a scone abomination and should be reserved for muffins or cookies only) - you should sprinkle them evenly on top of the dough now and then press them down lightly into the surface.  Then, roll the whole thing up into a log and roll back out to flatten the log into a 1" thick rectangle.  Cut into 8 triangles (first into squares then diagonally)

Brush tops with a little melted butter and sprinkle with a few grains of large grain sugar.  Cook  about 20 minutes (until golden brown), cool on wire rack 10 minutes.  ****** If for some reason you are making these ahead of time, don't cook them now.  Freeze them and then cook them whenever is a 375 oven for about 30 minutes.

Interesting bits - there's a debate on the pronunciation of scone - scones as SK ON, not SK OWN.  Then there's the village in Scotland, which is pronounced SK OON.

And finally, since I invoked Scotland, here's the National Trust Recipe:

350g self-raising flour, sifted

50g butter, softened
50g lard, softened
100-115ml milk

Preheat the oven to 190C. Grease two baking trays. Rub the fats into the flour, working as quickly and lighty as possible with cold hands. Add enough milk to give a soft, bread-like dough. On a floured board, roll out to a thickness of 1.5cm and cut into rounds with 6cm cutter. Place on the prepared trays and bake for 15-20 minutes until lightly golden and well risen.   Makes 12

If you are going to try the afternoon tea experience, you'll need to buy or make some clotted cream.  If you are going to make the American mistake of calling it high tea, you'll want to go out and get yourself some sausages, some thick bread, maybe some Scotch eggs, a pastie...  Afternoon tea is somewhat more refined, with crustless triangle sandwiches of cress and cream cheese or cucumber and smoked salmon, and scones with jam and clotted cream.  Bring out your tea service that you have stashed somewhere and turn it into a little treat with your stacked pastry plates and pretty tea cups.   Unless of course you are doing low carb living, in which case you should just continue reading about it, but not actually cook or eat any of these lovely things.

Recipe for Clotted Cream (which you'll need to make the day before you want it, since it takes hours).
Buy some high fat cream.  The highest you can get and the least pasturized (ultra pasturized is not suitable).  Unpasturized is what Joy of Cooking recommends, but good luck with that.
Essentially, you can follow a yogurt process.  Bring cream to room temperature, then heat in pot on low heat until rings form on the surface but cream does not boil.  Then place the pot in a warm oven and let it stay there for about 8 hours when it will have formed a thick yellow crust or cap of clotted cream.
Alternately, 
Preheat oven to 180F.  Pour as much cream as you need into oven safe dish until it's a little over 2 inches deep.  It turns to clotted cream at about a 50% ratio, so if you want 2 cups of clotted cream, use 4 cups of heavy cream.
Cover the cream and leave in the oven for about 8 hours (you can make the overnight) or until it's formed a thick yellow cap on top.  Allow to cool uncovered, then put in fridge covered until cold and lift the cream cap off gently with a spatula.  This cream cap is the clotted cream, so be gentle and put it immediately into another container.  It keeps for 5  days.  Use the remaining cream for cooking.

Still to try:

Cranberry Scones - recipe from Denyse Schmidt on the Design Sponge website

Preheat oven to 425°

• 3 cups flour (400g + 50g as needed)
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder (12g)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda (3g)
• 1/2 cup sugar (125g — more or less, to your taste)
• 12 tablespoons cold butter, cut up into small pieces (170g)
• 1 cup buttermilk (or you can use regular milk in a pinch) (240ml)
• 1 cup dried, sweetened cranberries (or more if you like, I just throw them in so I’m not sure how much I use) (a handful and a half)
• cinnamon and fresh ground nutmeg to taste
• 1 beaten egg white

Make sure all ingredients, especially butter and milk, are very very cold, straight from the refrigerator.  Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and sugar in a bowl.  Using two knives, or a pastry cutter, cut butter into mixture until the mixture resembles chunky oatmeal. Do not use your hands as the heat from them will soften the butter.  Add cranberries.  Add buttermilk and mix with a fork until just blended. It will resemble a shaggy mass.  Quickly knead the dough into a ball shape. If the dough is still quite sticky, add a bit more flour, a tablespoon at a time until it no longer sticks to your hands.   Sprinkle with a little cinnamon and grated nutmeg.  Fold dough in half and sprinkle with a little more cinnamon and grated nutmeg.  Knead and fold a few more times, sprinkling with a little of the cinnamon and nutmeg so the spices are layered in the dough. Be careful not to overwork dough.  Form the dough into a flat-ish circle on your baking sheet.   Cut into pie-shaped pieces –  about 8 to 10.   Brush tops with beaten egg white.    Bake 15 to 20 minutes.