“High tea has a place for us too — in our kitchens and bodegas, and on our friends’ stoops when catching up.”

Scones have a history. And not just of the upper class, but of whiteness. The history of scones goes back to Scotland, around the 1500s. In the 1840s, the Duchess of Bedford started what would later become the tradition of afternoon tea, after feeling hungry following breakfast. By the time Queen Victoria was crowned, books and magazines encouraging women to devote themselves to the domestic arts began to surface throughout England. The National Trust has a closely guarded scone recipe, resembling this one here. 

Scones are usually warmed up and served with afternoon tea. They traditionally contain currants or raisins, and are served with a clotted cream, lemon curd, or jam (high tea typically consists of all three). When I started working at Belamari Tea Room, I had just turned sixteen and the owners were three Black-American sisters, each with a distinct personality: Karen, the hostess, who had a voice that sweetened every day; Valerie, another hostess and waitress who taught me everything about the way to set up afternoon tea; Chef Lynne, the queen of the kitchen herself, who was tough yet kind, honest, and quick. A trip to England inspired them all to learn about high tea. I visited the Belamari Tea Room for the first time when I was fourteen years old, many years after I stopped having tea parties with my dolls.

“Okay, I want you to try a new flavor!” was something I’d often hear from the kitchen, along with the pulling of parchment paper, a sound that makes me smile in a pavlovian way as I imagine the taste. Previously, I had tried their original recipe, a plain scone that was warm, sweet, and the perfect canvas for high tea condiments. Other flavors were whipped up. Some contained fruit and raisins, while others were made with chocolate. I had never seen chocolate raspberry scones at any of the shops or other tea houses I had visited. The chocolatey-jam mixture was bursting with flavor!

I immediately was enchanted by every part of afternoon tea; from the methodic setting to the sharing of finger sandwiches and desserts, it felt like an intimacy among the women in my circle. Between my mother and I, we brought many of our friends to the tea house for birthday parties as I spent every  weekend there for over a year waiting tables, learning the ins and outs of the high tea ritual. I then began to visit other tea houses and shops, feeding my new found obsession.

After the Belamari Tea Room closed, my friend Yani started baking her own scones. “I always liked to bake, but I never made scones. I stuck to experimenting with cupcakes until the sisters closed down (Belamari Tea House). Then I realized I had to figure out how to make my own!” reflects Yani.  

Yani opened up Yani’s Bake House in 2018 and her scones quickly became a hit. Incorporating Dominican and Caribbean flavors into desserts. Her menu had everything from coquito cupcakes, to tres leches and dulce de leche scones. At Yani’s, scones became a part of Dominican and Puerto Rican afternoon “tea”, which usually consisted of a cafecito and a phone call (if company wasn’t present).  

Shortly after came her best seller: guayaba (guava) scones. They would be sold out by 10 AM some days. Guava reportedly landed in the states through Florida in 1847, and later Cuban and European methods (guava filling in traditional French puff pastries) came together to create guava and cheese pairings in pastelitos, with its popularity spreading throughout Miami, creating a guava scone and pairing it with traditional clotted cream was the recommendation. Traditionally, guava paste lined sheets of Dominican cake, pastries, and turnovers — now we add it to a European scone recipe to bring our own flavors to the table.

Reflecting on the desserts that I grew up with, guava filled turnovers and pastries were always on the table. If not, shortbread cookies or mantecaditos were served. Whenever I would visit my Dominican friends, chatter and chisme (gossip) followed the freshly made coffee and pastries. Whenever I would visit Yani’s shop, I’d peek in the back to see her forming the dough saying, “only enough where it comes together, do not over mix it!” 

Baking with Yani was another experience altogether.  [A few years ago], we got together and baked about 250 scones to help a family in need. Being a part of the moving machine myself was different than helping her prep on occasion. As we worked in tandem, baking guava scones and winter pecan batches, I wondered how these would fare on the islands our ancestors came from. 

Part of me wondered what my grandmother would think of them. High tea has a place for us too — in our kitchens and bodegas, and on our friends’ stoops when catching up. It’s clear that scones weren’t made for us, but we can bring our flavors to what are seen as eurocentric recipes, blending old with the new, to create a tea party where everyone sits comfortably at the table.