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11.11.2014

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A moist loaf cake with all the aromas and delicate taste of earl grey tea. Ideal as a breakfast cake or an accompaniment for your afternoon cuppa.

This cake tastes of earl grey tea. It really does. Not just a hint that you have to help along with a bit of imagination. It’s there. It’s earlgrey-y. It’s like drinking a cup of tea. My original plan was to use earl grey in a chocolate cake. I may still do this at some point, but this time I wanted something where this special flavour would be the star, rather than using it just to enhance the taste of chocolate, which is what I thought might happen with a choccie cake. You know, like when we use espresso to bring out the cocoa tones? (in this cake for example) You don’t actually taste the coffee. Well, here you actually taste the tea. Have I stressed this point enough? Ok, thought so.

So, a moist loaf cake with a lovely dark brown colour. Its moistness comes from the satisfyingly significant amount of butter, which however is made up for by the fairly small amount of sugar. Not being one to worry about all that, I thought I should up the sweetness a bit, so I sprinkled some demerara over the top of the batter before it went in the oven. Good decision. To get the tea flavour a bit of cream is infused with earl grey leaves. Quite a few of them. So fyi, there is some caffeine in this cake…

The cake kept really well in a tin; I left it on the baking paper and sat the whole thing on a piece of kitchen paper. After several days the last piece of cake had just started to dry out a bit, something that was easily rectified with a few seconds in the microwave. In the end, that might have been the best piece.

Ingredients

50 ml heavy cream

10 gr earl grey tea leaves (from about 4 large teabags)

230 gr butter, room temperature

150 gr (approx. 1/2 cup) sugar

4 eggs

180 gr (approx. 1 ¼ cup) all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 Tbs brown sugar

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I used teabags in which the leaves are like little grains. If your tea is the loose leaf variety and the leaves are quite large, grind them up a bit before using them.

Step 1

Heat the cream in a little bowl in the microwave till very hot but not boiling (30 seconds on high was enough for mine). Add the tea leaves and set aside to infuse.

Step 2

Preheat your oven to 170C fan (180C conventional) and line a loaf pan with baking paper. It helps to grease it slightly first, so the paper sticks. My pan is 24x11cm.

Step 3

With a mixer beat the butter and sugar till fluffy. You want to give it at least 5 minutes. Add the eggs one by one beating after each one. Then add the tea infused cream and mix it in.

Step 4

In a separate bowl mix the flour, baking powder and salt using a whisk. Add this to the cake mixture and on low speed beat until just incorporated.

Step 5

Spoon the batter into the cake pan and sprinkle the brown sugar over the top. Bake for about 40 minutes or until a skewer or toothpick comes out clean from the centre of the cake (a few dry crumbs on the skewer are fine). Leave to cool in the pan for 5 minutes then pull it out holding the sides of the baking paper.

Recipe slightly adapted from this one on the blog Vanillyn.

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2 Comments

  • Reply
    02/12/2014

    I love anything earl grey flavoured so this loaf is perfect for me! Definitely craving a slice right now..

    • Reply
      02/12/2014

      This cake is definitely made for you then! Hope you try it and let me know what you think 🙂 Thanks for dropping by.