It is the fifth day of A- Z Baking around the World and today’s alphabet is ‘Ę’. Here is a Earl Grey Tea Cake for this alphabet.

Earl Grey tea is a tea blend which has been flavored with the addition of oil of bergamot. Traditionally, “Earl Grey” was made from black teas. This tea is used as a flavoring for many types of cakes and confectionery. Even though I am not a tea person, I notice the rage of Chai Cakes on the blogs . Long back I had made a tea infused cake and I remember it was appreciated, hence I decided to make this English Cake.

I chose a recipe with eggs and used flax seed powder as the egg substitute. The recipe was pretty interesting, where I had to infuse the tea in milk and then add some more loose tea to the batter. The idea of loose tea powder in batter was new for me, I read the recipe a number of times, just to make sure that I was reading correct. The tea had to be powdered and then added.

The cake was light in color and after the cup cakes came out of the oven the color was completely different. The loose tea powder infused the batter . These cup cakes had a glaze of lemon, honey and ginger syrup, which reminded me of the famous Gujrati Chai with ginger. Some how the idea of ginger did not appeal me and I used only honey and lemon . The glaze gave a beautiful gloss and flavor to these cup cakes. They were very earthy and had a rustic flavor.

Earl Grey Tea Cakes

Ingredients

½ cup milk

4 earl grey tea bags ( I used Twinning’s)

½ cup butter

2 tbsp honey

¾ cup sugar

2 tbsp flax seed powder + 6 tbsp water

11/2 cups all purpose flour

¼ tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp lemon zest

Syrup

3 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp honey

¼ cup hot  water

3 tbsp lemon juice

Method

Heat milk in a small pot and add two tea bags to it. Cover and set aside for 10 minutes.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

Keep the cup cake liners ready.

Melt butter and honey in a pan.

Beat the mix, adding the flax seed mix.

Remove the tea bags from milk, squeezing all the liquid from it.

Add the infused milk, lemon zest and loose tea powder from tea bags to the liquid ingredients.

Sift flour, baking powder and salt.

Add to the wet ingredients and mix until well incorporated.

Pour into the cup cake mould and bake for 20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

For the syrup combine all syrup ingredients and warm the water.

Poke holes in the cup cakes which should have cooled a little by now.

Pour teaspoons of this syrup over these.