You can cook and bake delicious things with tea. There are several ways to bring the flavor of tea into your dish.
You can make a tea syrup and use it in baked goods as a flavoring and sweetener.
You can use tea leaves. They can be a fun decoration and add a crunch. But be careful: not everyone likes tea leaves, and it’s easy to use too many, even though you won’t taste them all that much.
You can infuse butter with tea. This gives the butter a tea flavor, and you can then use it in your dish—for example, in a buttercream. (You can also use Italian meringue as the base for your buttercream, with tea syrup instead of plain sugar syrup.)
Tea Cake
For this cake, I used the infusion method. It’s a small extra step when making your cake, and you’ll need a little extra butter.
For this cake, I used organic Earl Grey. It also gives your cake a slightly fresher flavor than regular tea.
Ingredients
- 250 grams butter
- 30 grams loose-leaf Earl Grey
- 200 grams white soft brown sugar
- 3 eggs (at room temperature)
- 225 grams cake flour
- a splash of milk
Method
Put the butter in a small saucepan and heat it over low heat until completely melted. Add the tea and let it simmer gently for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the stove/cooktop and let it stand for another 5 minutes. Meanwhile, place your mixing bowl on a scale and tare it.
Then pour the butter and tea through a fine sieve into the mixing bowl, pressing the leaves firmly with the back of a spoon. Once you’ve strained all the butter, you’ll see that there’s less left than you started with. Some will naturally cling to the tea leaves.
If there’s less than 200 grams, add a little oil or butter. Let the butter cool to room temperature.
Preheat your oven to 160 degrees and grease your cake tin with butter or baking spray. Then dust the tin with a little flour.
Add the sugar to the butter and mix well at medium speed. Then add the eggs and beat until light and fluffy. Next, add the cake flour and a splash of milk. Mix briefly until everything is combined.
Pour the batter into your cake tin and bake the cake in the center of the oven for 60–70 minutes.
