BAKERS excelled themselves during Tavistock Cream Tea Week by cooking up some highly innovative lip-smacking scone dishes.

As the birthplace of the Devonshire Cream Tea, customers are guaranteed a decent scone in Tavistock. This week, however, businesses excelled in celebrating variations on the traditional jam and cream combo.

Fifteen cafes and hotels invented a range of inspired cream tea flavours for visitors to try and to enter a competition to reward the most popular public dish and those judged by a panel to be most imaginative takes on the traditional teas.

From an Asian spiced scone with char sui pork and a cream tea in the colours of the Italian flag, to a delightful vegan combination and a ploughman’s cream tea, they pulled out all the stops in a bid to be crowned winner of ‘Tavistock has talent in scones’. 

Competition judge Mayor Cllr Paul Ward said: ‘The difficulty was deciding the best when the overall standard was very high, and all the contestants had been so inventive and imaginative.”

The winners were: The public vote ‘people’s choice’ – Coffee & Cream; Champion of Champions – The Bedford Hotel; Best Scone – King Street Bakery; Most Innovative New Sweet Cream Tea – Taylors Bistro, and Most Innovative New Savoury Cream Tea – No. 76. Cllr. Ward added: “We were bowled away by Taylors’ vegan scones with coconut Chantilly and mango coulis served with mango iced tea, beautifully presented and enhanced by slivers of candied lime peel. The Korean-influenced cream tea offered by 76 West Street was exciting and delicious, with ginger and spring onion scones, pulled char sui pork and gochujang yoghurt topped with a pinch of pork crackling, and served with a choice of bubble teas.”

Coffee & Cream’s dish was elderflower scone with Chantilly cream and toffee apple jam. Commended were new Tavistock businesses; Aroma with its Mediterranean cream tea with labneh and tapenade, and Eastgate Brasserie for its USA chicken inspired cream tea. The Bedford Hotel’s champion tea was cheddar, chive and nigella seed scones, Bedford chorizo jam, and lime and saffron ricotta.

Cllr. Ward congratulated everyone who took part and thanked Tavistock Business Improvement District for organising the week.