two of my favourite things all baked together in one little humble loaf of joy.
recipe taken from Lady and Pups: an angry food blog who derived it from a Martha Stewart recipe. she's so very witty and sarcastic oh my gosh I love it!
yield: one loaf
3 tablespoons (10 grams) black tea/Irish breakfast/English breakfast [I used Irish breakfast.]
1 cup whole milk
1 1/2 stick (170 g) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/3 cup honey + 2-3 tablespoons
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups cake flour, or all-purpose
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
Preheat the oven on 350ºF/175ºC.
Grind black tea-leaves in a spice-grinder until coarsely ground (like the consistency of ground coffee for French-press), then add to the milk in a small sauce pot. If you don’t have a spice-grinder, combine tea-leaves with milk in a blender, and blend to the same consistency. Bring to a simmer on medium-heat then turn the heat off. Leave the ground tea-leaves in the milk and let steep while cooling down to room-temperature.
Cream the butter and sugar together with a stand-mixer/hand-held mixer until light and fluffy, approx 3 min. Add the eggs one at a time and beat it into the creamed butter until the mixture is light and fluffy again, 2 min for each egg. Then add 1/3 cup of honey and vanilla extract, beat until smoothly combined.
Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Beat the flour-mixture and the black tea-milk (that’s cooled down to room-temp) alternatively into the creamed butter-mixture, starting and ending with the flour-mixture. Basically: 1/3 of flour-mixture + 1/2 of black tea-milk + 1/3 of flour-mix + 1/2 of black tea-milk + the last 1/3 of flour-mix. Mix each step until just smooth and don’t over-work the batter.
Butter the inside of a loaf-pan and dust with flour. Make sure to tap the pan to release excess flour. Pour the batter into the pan, and swirl 3 tbsp of honey into the batter with a spoon. Bake in the oven until golden-brown on top and a wooden skewer comes out clean from the center of the loaf, 50-60 min.
Let the cake cool off slightly.
Serve the sliced cake with honey whipped cream (optional - see her blog for the recipe!)
enjoy!
emily
x
