Baking with tea
Sunday, June 6, 2010 at 10:04PM 
earl grey cupcake with lemon frosting & candied orange zest
It's Sunday night and I've just settled down with a cup of chamomile tea. That's what I love about tea... there is tea for every time of the day.
Especially love these assorted teabags that Dan gave me for Mothers Day, there from the Australian tea shop T2. The lemon grass and ginger is so warming, the chai reminds me of Christmas, but I can't go past my childhood favourite Earl Grey.
Ooops didn't quite work out; Popular Earl Grey is simply black tea flavoured with Bergamot orange, somewhere along the line today I thought lemon frosting with candied orange would be a great topping for earl grey cupcakes... it's not, overwhelmed the tea flavour, was reminiscent of Lady Grey tea with all the citrus notes but not want I was aiming for. I wanted the earl grey flavour to shine, so over the next few week the guys are taste testing a few different earl grey cupcakes to find a "winner".
I'll be using different methods to get the tea flavour into the cake & toppings;
Infuse the butter... melting butter with the contents of 2 teabags over a gentle heat and allowing it to cool, draining the tea leaves from the cooled butter leaving behind a buttery infusion.
Add the leaves... I'm going to be lightly grinding earl grey leaves in a mortar and pestle. I don't want a powder but rather tiny leaf pieces to add directly to the cake batter and icing.
Water or Milk infusion... making a strong mini cup of tea to replace the fluid in the recipe.
Should be fun finding the best method, I'll post the results, comments and photos.
Before I go today, I couldn't resist my inner geek so here is a clip of my favourite Star Trek line "tea, Earl Grey, hot" ;)
Happy Baking :)
Reader Comments (2)
Ooh I love this Jeniffer, I love experimenting with tea in baking. This just looks so delicious.
Great photo too.
Thanks Haniela :) Wished you lived closer by a few thousand miles and we could try out different tea recipes on each other!