Saturday, March 12, 2011

Food Friday (or Food Fail Saturday): Earl Grey cake

Belated in this case makes it more of a Food Saturday post. The reason is that I've been too consumed with books lately to post this on time*. 

Today's recipe is one I adapted from Blisstree, using less sugar, more lemon juice and adding poppy seeds (because they look pretty). My other contribution to the recipe is forgetting the most important part: greasing and flouring the pan. If you know me in person, you're not surprised in the least. 

Earl Grey tea, lemon & poppy seed cake. 

Ingredients: 
  • 3 cups flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 cup unsalted butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/2 cup Earl Grey tea
  • juice of 1 1/2 lemon
  • zest of one lemon
  • 1/3 cup poppy seeds

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Grate the zest of one lemon. 

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Brew a small-ish cup of tea, and add the juice of 1 1/2 lemons. 

Instructions: 

If your oven doesn't have a broken button, you can preheat it to 350 F (175° C). Mine was set to 170°C. 
Head over to Blisstree to read the rest of the recipe. Add the poppy seeds after folding in the flour and tea mixtures into the creamed mixture. 

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I hope you weren't expecting some really pretty cake. You would be very disappointed. If you forget to grease & flour the pan, you will end up with an ugly, crumbly cake because it's next to impossible to take it out without it falling apart. I now present to you my failed experiment. 

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Bottom of the cake. 

When you mess up a recipe and the bottom of the cake falls out, put the rest of the cake on a pretty cake stand and take photos of its halfway decent side. 

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And if its outside looks funky once you take it out 
of the pan, you can mess with the colors. 


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* I read The Age of Dreaming by Nina Revoyr, and am currently reading Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. I absolutely loved the story of The Age of Dreaming even though the writing style sometimes got to me. Flashbacks seem incredibly difficult to do in novels, and Revoyr's way of introducing them was very unsubtle. All other aspects of the book were just so good that I had to forget how much her the way she introduced the flashback sequences made me cringe. I suggest you pick it up if you're looking for a great novel to get lost in. 

1 comment:

Jacqueline said...

yum! this looks so good! i don't know if i've ever had cake flavored with tea, but that sounds so delicious.