cedar + wine

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!

the recipe:

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!)  

                     And you know what goes well with this?  A cup of strong black tea with milk :)

enjoy!

emily
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