Tea Party

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen. Welcome to my kitchen. I'm getting everything ready. I'm

gonna have a few friends in for a tea party. So today I'm gonna be fixing the

cutest little individual strawberry shortcakes and you're gonna love my gooey pecan squares. And of course no tea party's complete without some scrumptious

sour cream scones that we've topped off with a sweet raspberry fig preserve

So y'all sit back. It's a tea party, y'all. Let's go ahead and get started

I've got everything gathered here that we're going to need to make the cake part of our

strawberry shortcake. And I'm going to use two cups of all-purpose flour

There we go. Just right into the bowl, I'm going to pour it

To my flour, I'm going to add a half a teaspoon of salt, one tablespoon of baking powder, three

tablespoons of sugar. Now I'm gonna cut in one stick of very cold butter that I've

cut up into pieces. Now you'll want to make sure that this is not at room

temperature because we don't want our butter to like melt into our flour. We

want it to be cut in so there's little chunks of butter. All right so we're just

gonna pulse this until we see that that butter is cut into that flour. One more

little pulse. Alright there we go. Yeah that looks good. Almost looks like a

little bit like cornmeal. Very quickly the food processors work great for that

Now I'm just gonna transfer that to my bowl. I'm gonna make a well

And I'm gonna add 2 thirds a cup of half and half

And just work that into my buttery dough. I remember when I was a young girl, my mama would go to the grocery store

store, and she would buy those little cakes. The packages came like six, had six shells for

strawberry shortcake, and oh man, did we love those. But that was definitely the store-bought

answer, and there's nothing like the real old-timey sweet biscuit for strawberry shortcake

So I'm excited about making these today. All right, I've got all of our half and half mixed in

Now I'm just gonna take our spatula and I've got some flour up here on my counter

And I'm just gonna put our dough into that flour. And you can see that our dough is very, very sticky

So that little bit of flour is gonna give me just enough to kind of knead into that dough

so I can touch it without it sticking to me. And this is just perfect

Now I'm not even gonna have to roll this dough out. I'm just gonna pat it out three quarters to an inch thick

and you can see how easy and quick that was to get our shortcakes together

A beautiful fat biscuit. I'm just going to add this to the tray over here that I got going

Now you'll want to make sure when you're making your dough for your strawberry shortcake that you don't overwork your dough

You want to just handle it as little as possible. Okie doke

So I've got these on a cookie sheet. Now I want to just brush the tops with a little half and half

and I'm doing that for two reasons. The half and half will give a little sheen to our shortcakes

Plus, I've got a little extra sugar for these bad boys, and that half and half will give the sugar something to stick to You know this is a dessert so I want my biscuits to be sweet Okay so we going to pop this in

to a preheated oven at 400 degrees. In they go. And while those are baking, I'm going to come over here

and I'm going to finish up my strawberries. I had gotten them started

Now I'm using like one quart of strawberries. The larger ones I'm quartering, the smaller strawberries I'm just cutting in half

Had a junior strawberry and a granddaddy strawberry there. All right, so into the bowl they go

I'm going to toss them with a fourth of a cup of sugar

And that sugar will go into those strawberries, and they're going to produce a nice juice

I'm going to give these a quick stir so they can get to mixing with that sugar

And when we come back, I want to share with you a favorite recipe of ours

down here in the South. They're called pecan squares. And it's going to be delicious along with our tea

And then later, sour cream scones with a raspberry fig preserve. Hey y'all, welcome back

While we were on break, I took the biscuits out of the oven, and look how beautiful these little biscuit cakes look

I'm going to use a serrated knife so that they won't crumble on me

Look in here. See that? Oh my goodness, the girls are going to love it

Mmm. Now I'm going to come in here with my strawberries

Just kind of pile them up on there and now I'm going to go in for that juice

And now I'm going to come back in here and put my lid on it

a few more strawberries on top of that. And you can't have strawberry shortcake

without some nice sweetened whipped cream, can you? And some of my beautiful mint

from the garden. Look at that

Look at that beautiful shortcake just glistening. Y'all don't mind if I go ahead and taste, do you

Mmm. I don't know what to say. It's so delicious. I know my girlfriends are going to love it

We'll move on down here because I want to start on the next dish, and that's the pecan squares

Now, I've got four eggs here waiting to go into my bowl

and I'm cracking those one at a time. I'm going to crack them first and drop them in this little small bowl

so I can just give them the old eagle eye and make sure those birds were flying straight that day

And so far, so good. They look great. Got a little bit of a shell there

You know, I don't know about your town, but Savannah has gotten some nice tea rooms

in some tea shops here in the last few years, and people are really into them, especially women

All right, I've gotten my four eggs beaten. Now I'm going to add a one-pound box of light brown sugar

The whole box goes in there. And sometimes your brown sugar will clump up on you

You know, if you need to, just take your whisk and go down in there and break up that brown sugar

I think that last chomp got them all. So in our double boiler, it goes

So there we go. We're going to cook this for about 20 minutes or until it gets to 240 degrees

Now while that's cooking, come on over here, and we can be mixing up our dry ingredients

for our pecan squares. I'm gonna measure out one and a half cups

of all-purpose flour. So that's a half. And this is a full cup I gonna add a half a teaspoon of baking powder

There we go. And I've got one and a half cups of chopped pecans

that I'm gonna just toss that into our flour mixture. There we go

All right, let's come back over here and give our pot a stir

We'll stick our thermometer in and just kind of see where we're at

Okay, so it's ready. So I'm just gonna pour our eggs and brown sugar that's been cooking over our flour and our pecans

And before you know it, we're gonna be snacking on fabulous pecan squares

And I'm gonna add a teaspoon of vanilla flavoring. And then we're just gonna stir that up, just like that

Just mix that until our flour is incorporated. Okey-doke. That easy

I'm just gonna pour that into our pan that I've buttered and floured

Okay. Just gonna spread those out. And you can see, because this is partially cooked

kind of wants to be a little stubborn. Now, we cooked our shortcakes at 400 degrees

I've lowered my oven temperature to 350. So in they go, 22 to 25 minutes

And when we come back, I'm going to be making some wonderful sour cream scones

All right, y'all, that was a very, very quick 22 minutes. And our pecan squares are done

Now I'm going to sit here and let them cool for a little bit. And come on down here, and I'm going to make us some sour cream scones

I'm going to start with two cups of all-purpose flour. Just right in there

Can y'all hear Lady Bird? She's wanting me to come out there and talk to her

All right. Three tablespoons of sugar. This kind of sounds like our shortcakes

that we did for the strawberry shortcake, doesn't it? It's a little different though

Two tablespoons of bacon powder. one teaspoon of baking soda

in that goes, and a half a teaspoon of salt. Now I've got five tablespoons of real, real cold butter

and we're gonna cut that in until again it looks like about the consistency of cornmeal

That looks good. All right. Now I'm gonna add one cup or one eight-ounce container of sour cream

And to shake up our little Prissy Tea Party, I'm gonna pull out my egg separator that says

more Paula than Prissy. And I'm just gonna... Look at that y'all, I just love it. I know

you kids out there love it too. Mom and Daddy may think it's sickening, but I just love it

It's very, very important that we take time to laugh and have fun. And that's definitely

one of those things that just makes me laugh. All right. So let's mix this together

You can see our dough is starting to form a ball in there

All right, there we go. Now I'm gonna bring this out onto my cutting board

and I'm gonna put a little flour up here because once the ingredients got mixed together

it became very soft again. Okay so I gonna just take my spatula and get the rest of that out Okay Oh and this looks very good

Now I'm just going to pat this out about one inch thick

kind of pat it into a square. I'm going to come in here

and I'm going to cut this into four squares. And I'm gonna cut them diagonally one time, giving us eight triangles

Okay, that's great. I'm gonna come over here and I'm gonna get my grandmother's spatula and just transfer those to my baking sheet

Just like that. The dough is beautiful, isn't it

Okey-doke. Last one on. And I'm gonna brush them with half and half

because it's gonna give it that little bit of shine. And instead of using regular sugar

I'm gonna use a raw sugar. It's so pretty to work with

And I'm just gonna sprinkle those tops of those scones with lots of that raw sugar

All right. So in the oven, our scones go 350 degrees for about 12 to 14 minutes

Okay, so the scones are in the oven about 12 to 14 minutes

and I'm getting this tea party pulled together rather nicely, y'all. When we come back, I'm gonna pull it all together

Our scones will be ready. I'm gonna cut our pecan squares. And coming up next is Raspberry Fig Preserves

the perfect topping for our scones. Hey, y'all, our scones should be ready now

Let's take a quick look. Oh, gosh, they look good. They're that beautiful, light, golden brown

They look delicious, but I tell you what, we can't serve a scone without something to smear on it, can we

And let me show you how easy we're going to put this together. I've got three cups of mashed figs, three cups of sugar, and two three-ounce packages of raspberry gelatin

So all I had to do was mix that up, and when my sugar dissolved in there

I cooked this for five minutes. So in just five minutes, our raspberry fig preserves are ready

Just put them in your jar, throw them in the refrigerator, and you can enjoy it for weeks and weeks

The easiest preserves you will ever make. And it's beautiful, isn't it

All right, so I'm going to take my leftover extra preserves and put that over here for the girls

Oh, my goodness. These look powerful good, don't they? And the scones are still warm

And I think I'm gonna have maybe a little butter. The girls and I are gonna have such a good time

The strawberry shortcake, the pecan squares. Look how yummy those look. Mmm. They're out of this world. Mmm

Mmm. And the stones. Mmm. They may not seem very exciting, y'all, but they are delicious

especially with this raspberry fig preserves. Mmm. Yummy. I think you're going to love it

And it's been fun being with you today. I appreciate y'all coming to my tea party

and until next time we're together, I wish y'all love and best dishes

from my kitchen to yours