Twinings Earl Grey Tea Loaf Cake

British people drink a lot of tea. 

Excessive amounts really.

From an objective point of view, Wikipedia says the annual consumption per capita is 2.74kg, making the UK 5th highest on the list. Of course, I do not vouch for the reliability of this information, but if it was the case, that would equate to 1370 cups of tea a year, so 3.75 cups a day (Approximating that a tea bag weighs 2g) That seems like a fair bit to me, as your average cup is 250mL, so it's almost a litre!

The facts are there, guys. There's no denying the British love their tea. So why not, tea flavoured cake?

Earl Grey is the most popular choice for tea-infused cakes. I loved this gorgeous earl grey tea cake by Laura on Building Buttercream, but I decided that I would make mine much more simpler. Hers is a special occasion cake, mine is a everyday cake.

I started off with infusing the Earl Grey flavour. I use Twinings Earl Grey tea bags normally, so I just grabbed 4 of those (i.e. average daily consumption as per my calculations above).

I assumed the best way to extract the flavour would be to soak it in hot liquid. Water in large amounts is an unusual ingredient in cake, but milk is much more widely used. So I gently heated up some milk, and poured it over my tea bags to infuse for 5 minutes. Then, remove the tea bags and cool the liquid to room temperature.

I made this Earl Grey Tea loaf cake using a creaming butter and sugar method. So I took my butter out to get it to room temperature, and mashed it up a bit with a wooden spoon to make sure it was nice and soft.

Then I tipped in some golden caster sugar. Creaming sugar and butter by hand is not as straight forward as using a machine. At first, it seems like there isn't enough butter. So I find it easier to start by pushing the sugar into the butter, rather than aimlessly stirring it around. Then, once it seems to be incorporated, it's a matter of moving and spreading the mixture around the sides of the bowl. It takes a while of mashing and bashing, but eventually you will find that the volume of the mixture seems to have doubled, and the colour is lighter.

Make sure you do get it to a state with lots of air incorporated inside, as this relieves some of the density of the cake. The good thing is, you can't overcream, so there's no need to worry about that. Bear in mind that if you use golden or brown (as opposed to white) sugar, it will pale less, and also, if you use coarser granules, then the mixture will be grainy rather than smooth.

Add your eggs one at a time, beating it into the butter and sugar mixture well after each addition.

Prep your dry ingredients by sieving flour, baking powder and salt. Add it to your wet mixture slowly, in 2 or 3 parts, so it is easier to mix and lump free.

This is the reason I do cake by hand sometimes. When you folding the flour with the other ingredients, you want to handle it as little as possible because physical motion is what activates gluten, something good for breads, but less good for cakes.

Using a wooden spoon, you can fold very gently, until it is literally just combined, whereas using a stand mixer, I find it much easier to go a bit overboard.

Time to add your wonderful flavour! I poured in all my earl grey tea infused milk, and again stirred it only until it was just combined.

Although the colour was beautiful now, a rich milky tea colour, I thought that it could do with speckles of the tea leaves themselves. I ripped open one of my used Twinings Earl Grey tea bags, and emptied it in. Add more if you want more speckles!

Stir.

It is quite a runny batter, at least more runny than what I am used to, but it works just fine so don't think anything has gone wrong.

It's done at this point, so all you need to do is line a loaf tin with some baking paper, and pour your batter in.

I baked it at 160˚C in my fan-oven and it was done in 40 minutes. I think it depends a lot on the depth of your cake, so just keep an eye on it. It's done when you press on the top, and it springs back, or you can check with a toothpick inserted in the middle, which should come out clean.

Let it cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then take it out and let it cool some more. I like to take the baking paper off when the cake is still warm, but not hot, as I find that has the least chance of sticking.

When it's cool, it's easier to cut into without the cake crumbling to bits.

TWININGS EARL GREY TEA LOAF CAKE by Sam | Svelte Salivations

A moist and dense, yet soft loaf cake for Earl Grey tea-lovers out there.

Makes 1 loaf with 8 slices. Takes 1 hour of your time: 20 minutes to prepare and 40 minutes to bake.

What you need:

• 4 Twinings Earl Grey teabags (or any of your choice)
• 200mL milk (I used skimmed, but any will do)
• 100g butter, room temperatures
• 200g golden caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 150g plain flour
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder
• large pinch of salt

How you make it:

1. Preheat oven to 160˚C fan / 180˚ normal.
2. Gently heat milk in a pan until just simmering, take off the heat and infuse all the teabags in it for 5 minutes. After that, remove and set aside the tea bags, and let the milk cool to room temperature.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar. To make it easier, mash up and soften the butter first, and slowly incorporate the sugar. Beat lots of air into it so it turns out nice and pale and fluffy. 
4. Add eggs one at a time, and beat it into the mixture when after each one.
5. Sieve flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl, then add 1/3 of this into the wet mixture. Fold with gentle strokes, as if you don't want to disturb it, and do the same with the rest, adding 1/3 at a time. Stop as soon as it is just combined!
6. Pour in the tea-infused milk, and stir so it's mixed together. If you wish, stir in the contents of 1 (or more) teabags to add a speckled look to your cake.
7. Line a loaf tin with baking paper and pour in the cake batter.
8. Bake for 40 minutes or until done, all the while enjoying the smell of tea perfuming your kitchen.  
9. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then take it out of the tin and baking paper and cool completely.
10. Dust with icing sugar and enjoy!

Portobello Mushroom Mania: Two Ways with Eggs for Breakfast

WARNING: MORE MUSHROOMS!

That bag of mushrooms I bought doesn't have a bottom. It's a magic mushroom bag. As in, a magic bag containing mushrooms, not a bag of magic mushrooms unfortunately! ;)

So I've made dinner (soup) and lunch (sandwich) with these portobello mushrooms already, so obvious next up is breakfast!

In order to prevent mushroom boredom, I decided to make my portobello mushroom breakfast in TWO different ways. Oh, the choices!

Both use eggs and bread and a simple balsamic reduction. Easy! So with the same ingredients, you can make:

1. Poached eggs with sliced portobello mushrooms on toast
2. Portobello mushroom omelette
3. Both!

Slice up your mushrooms. You can use as many you like, or as few. It just depends how many mushrooms you want. Then sauté them in sizzling hot butter until all the water evaporates off. Set them aside.

Now put the pan back on a medium-low heat and pour in about 50mL of balsamic vinegar. There's no need to use the fancy schmancy stuff, regular stuff is fine - just make sure it's not the pre-mixed vinaigrette. Scrape any sticky mushrooms bits off the pan with a wooden spatula and reduce the balsamic vinegar until it's about half the volume. Reserve it in a small bowl or dish.

That's pretty much that basis of these two breakfasts. Sautéed portobello mushrooms and a balsamic reduction for sauce.

So first up, poached eggs.

Simply toast some bread, butter it up if desired, and top with a layer of mushrooms. Then poach an egg and lay in on top.

Drizzle some of that balsamic reduction, which may have thickened up once cooled, on top and serve warm.

Breaking into that runny gooey yolk and watching it ooze all over the mushrooms and toast is a feast for your eyes. Then taking a bite of the smooth silky egg, combined with the umami / meaty feel of the mushrooms, then the crunch of the toast, all topped with a sweet tangy balsamic sauce will be pleasure for your tastebuds.

There isn't much more you want in life.

Apart from this omelette of course. ;)

Just your standard omelette. So beat up two eggs, season with a pinch of salt and pepper, and pour into a buttered pan over medium heat. Give the pan a swirl, so that the bottom is all hidden by the egg, and let cook for 2 minutes until the edges have set, but the top isn't quick done. Sprinkle over the mushrooms on one half. Then with a spatula, or two, or with whatever works for you, pick up edges on the half without the mushroom filling, lift, and fold on top of the half with the mushrooms.

Again, drizzle with the balsamic reduction. Serve with toast.

It's a brilliantly filling and satisfying, shroomy and eggy breakfast, that will get your day off to a bright and cherry start.

Which one's for you? Which one do you want to wake up to? 

Portobello Mushroom Grilled Cheese and Pesto Sandwich

In an ideal world, I would have amazing sandwiches for lunch errrday. Delicious slices of bread with lots of scrumptious filling would definitely make my days. Beef steak with rocket, pesto chicken and tomatoes, smoked salmon with avocado, caramelised onion and sausage... Oh my!

In reality, I have pita bread. Plain. On a good day, when I have time to grab something from the kitchen counter and shove it into my bag. Otherwise it's a low calorie day for me!

That's because I don't get up early enough in the morning to make lunch, and I wouldn't make it the night before in the fear it wouldn't taste the same a whole day later. Self-inflicted, really.

So I suffer through the week, but that's what makes weekend lunches so much more to look forward to.

I've still got my massive bag of portobello mushrooms, so they're definitely going to be on the menu today. And tomorrow. And the day after. Hopefully not the day after that, but maybe. 

These meatilicious mushrooms are a great vegetarian sandwich filler because of their texture and flavour. I roasted these in the oven at 200˚C (fan-forced) for 15 minutes or so until all the juices had steamed off and they started getting dry and crispy on the edges. All I added was some olive oil and salt and pepper.

On two thick-cut slices of bread I smeared one side with pesto, and topped the other with cheese. I used Red Leicester. It's actually the first time I've tried it (I bought it because of the beautiful orange colour) and it's definitely something I would go for again. If you don't know what it is either, I'd describe it as similar to cheddar, but milder and more nutty.

Grill those in the oven on the top shelf until the cheese melts and bubbles.

Arrange your mushrooms on top of the slice with cheese. Then top with the other slice. 

The flavours and colours of this sandwich are wonderful. Green pesto + Orange (not red?) Red Leicester cheese + Black portobello mushrooms + Golden toasted white bread.

Depending on the size of your slices of bread, this sandwich can be quite a mouthful and not practically easy to eat. In that case, cut in half and go from there.

I bet you're salivating ;)

Portobello Mushroom Soup

My local market doesn't understand the use of labelling. I love shopping there, don't get me wrong, but I really think they should start labelling things properly.

So it probably doesn't matter much with things like banana, cherries, broccoli, etc. but it's very unhelpful to label various sizes, shapes and colours of potatoes all as potatoes. Oh sometimes, they put 'large potatoes', 'small potatoes', and 'washed potatoes' but that isn't very informative either. So when recipes tell you to buy some floury varieties like Desiree, Maris Piper or King Edward, I just have to guess and check.

Are all flat-capped mushrooms with black gills called portobello mushrooms? A Google search of portobello mushrooms does show up mushrooms like these. The only reason I wonder is because this entire bag (weighing 1.7kg!) only cost me £1.50! Whereas, in Hong Kong, the supermarkets could sell at up to HK$40 for 4. To put that into comparable terms, that's just under £3 for 4 mushrooms. 

How crazy is the price difference?

These mushrooms certainly look, feel, and taste like the same portobellos I buy in Hong Kong. I'd love to know if they really are the same thing.

I ended up with this whole bag because the man at the store convinced me that a small bag (for 50p) wouldn't be enough. "Eh pet, you sure you don't want a big bag, them mushrooms'll shrink and you'll be left with nothin', go on take a big bag"

So now I have close to 2kg of mushrooms to devour.

The quickest way to use up as many mushrooms as possible is to make soup, I thought. So I went a-chop-chop-chopping.

I used about half my bag - 800g ish. 

Now a lot of mushroom soup recipes call for a variety of other vegetables - potatoes, leeks, onions... but I wanted to let my shrooms shine (well also because I didn't have any of those other vegetables at hand...) so I kept the other ingredients to a minimum.

When cooking portobello mushrooms, I find they have much meatier texture and richer taste than normal white button mushrooms, so I may have been able to miss this next step. But I love mushrooms, and the more the merrier, so I soaked a small handful of dried wild mushrooms too.

With some butter sizzling on a very hot pan, I fried some minced garlic until fragrant, and then poured in my diced portobello mushrooms.

I cooked mine in two batches because I wanted to properly sauté the mushrooms, rather than boil / steam them as can happen when the pan gets overcrowded. It's like tanning on a hot beach, if it's empty and quiet then you can relax and get nicely evenly brown, but if it's crowded, you just feel like is hot and sweaty, and not in a good way!

It's tempting to stir your mushrooms, but I find that if you leave them in the pan to do their own thing,  they'll cook much better. As long as you have enough butter to cover the pan, they shouldn't stick too much. 

The mushrooms will then give off all their water, and at this point I reduced the heat to medium, and let it boil off and then begin to caramelise. Then, I used the soaking water from the dried mushrooms to deglaze any brown sticky bits from the pan.

Add in your now soaked dried wild mushrooms, all diced up too, and give a quick stir.

Top with 1L of milk and chicken stock. I used 500mL of each, but you can vary it according to how creamy you want it. Add some sprigs of thyme, and boil for 5 minutes or so.

If you want it smooth and creamy, scoop batches into a jug blender and blitz all the chunks of mushroom into oblivion. Now season to taste. 

Then you can just gently reheat the soup to serve, with some extra thyme, and sautéed mushrooms. 

It's magical mushroom essence, with all the notes of the outdoors - the trees, forests, muddy woodlands, and tiny sparkly fairies. The velvet texture of the soup also resembles the feel of the tops of raw mushrooms. I can see why the fairies like to perch there.  

I got a good crusty loaf of bread from my local market as well for 50p to dunk with the soup ;)

Pork, caramelised onion, and halloumi sandwich

In my first year of uni, I would come back to my dingy little flat after a night out and stuff my face. Lots of students prefer to pop by 'maccy-Ds' or Munchies or that cheap greasy chippy round the corner, but after watching one too many intoxicated folks bring up the entire contents of their stomach, I tended to avoid those.

So instead I'd go home and consume toast. Not just one slice, or two slices, or even three. I would have six slices. SIX. 6. S-I-X. That's like half loaf.

Yea, and then I wondered how I gained 15 pounds...

I'm not proud of it, but thinking about it, I find it odd though that so much bread never managed to make me feel full. Whereas, if you have a sandwich for lunch, it's enough.

In fact, more than enough. These pork, onion and halloumi sandwiches don't look massive, but we barely managed to finish these. But we did, of course, because they're amazing.

Another reason I stopped buying food on the way home was because it was expensive. Now a whole pizza for £5 is actually a very good deal, but that half-loaf of bread would've cost me 50p. #studentlife

These pork, onion and halloumi sandwiches are the perfect student budget meal. 

• 4 slices of bread ~ 40p (loaf for £1)
• 1 onion ~ 33p (3 onions for £1)
• 1/4 cucumber ~ 15p (whole cucumber for 60p)
• 1 pork shoulder steak ~ 70p (4 steaks for £3)
• 4 slices of halloumi ~ £1.20 (pack for £2.35)
• TOTAL = 2.78 for two sandwiches = £1.39 per sandwich

£1.39 would probably get you half a ham and cheese sandwich at the student union. Not that there's anything wrong with a ham and cheese sandwich, but c'mon these are so much better!

I just grilled the pork shoulder steak in a very hot pan with a drop of oil (shoulder steaks have some fat in them already), 5 minutes or so on each side or whatever the packet says. Then I left it on a plate to rest while I fried my sliced onion in the pork juices left in the pan. I like my onions very soft and caramelised, so I used a lower heat and a longer time, but it's up to you. Then I dished up the onions too.

You have to wipe your pan clean now. Otherwise all the pork juices and leftover caramelised onions will burn your plan. Then with some more oil on a medium heat, I pan-fried the halloumi slices. They take a few minutes to brown, then you can flip them and do the other side as well.

While waiting for my halloumi, I slid my bread into the toaster, and sliced up by pork. Slice the steak on an angle to get bigger, thinner pieces. Then divide them between two pieces of toast (buttered if you want), top with two pieces of halloumi each, a pile of delicious caramelised onions, and then complete the sandwich with the other two pieces of toast. Slice up some cucumber on the side to make it look healthy. Not that it needs it, it's pretty healthy anyway. I think.

Pork, caramelised onion, and halloumi sandwich.

Go ahead and dig in.

Champagne poached pears

Do you ever have an unfinished bottle of a champagne lying round that you're not sure what to do with?

No, I didn't think so. I don't know how we managed NOT to finish a bottle of champagne. I really don't. It's very odd. But we did.

I had not idea what to do with it. I mean, it's good champagne, but even good champagne isn't so good the next day. But not bad enough to throw it away. Do you know what I mean? No, probably not, because no one doesn't finish champagne...

So the internet came to the rescue, and I realised that people have (for unknown reasons, still) found half bottles of champagne lying round and they seem to like to put it to good use in the form of champagne poached pears.

I didn't really have a recipe to follow, but I just took inspiration from this, this, this and this.

I don't even know what variety of pears these are. I just found them for cheap (£1 a bag of like 6 or more) at the local market. They weren't too soft and held their shape quite well, which is the type of pears which are ideal.

I peeled them but left them whole, stems intact, just slicing their bottoms so they could stand upright. Unless you've already prepared your poaching liquid, and are going to poach them right away, it's better to leave them in some water so they don't brown.

 

My poaching liquid was the rest of the bottle of champagne (about 350mL), and then I topped this small but deep pot with water. I used 1/4 cup sugar, like the recipe from The Year In Food here, but all the others used about 1 cup (for the same amount of liquid) which I would imagine to be very sweet. 

I chose to infuse my syrup with cinnamon sticks, vanilla bean paste, and some clementines, just cut in half and gently squeezed to release some juice and flavour.

Once the sugar has dissolved, bring the liquid just to boiling point, and then you can submerge the pears. Keep the liquid barely simmering. 

You'll need enough liquid to cover the pears completely, so add some more water if you need. To make sure my pears remained submerged, I snipped a circle of parchment paper to fit the top of the pot and gently stuck it down. I cut a hole to let the steam through too.

These took 20 minutes or so, but it really depends on your pears. So just keep an eye on them. When done, it'll be easy to stick a toothpick through them, but they'll still be firm enough to hold their shape.

I made these before dinner and then just left them to cool in the pot, off the heat. When serving them, they were room temperature, and I just heated up the poaching liquid and poured it over to warm them a little.

They were really amazing and so easy to make! It's such an elegant dessert (champagne will do that to everything!) and so versatile too. I loved the spice of the cinnamon and vanilla, and the tartness of the clementines. 

If you like your desserts sweet (which I usually do) you can add more sugar to the poaching liquid, but I found 1/4 cup to be just right, as the pears themselves have a natural sweetness. You can infuse anything you like really, and I'm excited to try some other spices and flavours next time!

Salmon en croûte

So much of the time my dinner ideas are just inspired by what I have around. Trying to think of something to make from scratch, then having to go out and grab all the ingredients is a lot harder than it sounds!

We didn't manage to finish the side of salmon yesterday as sashimi (barely had any, really) and it was sitting in the fridge taking up a lot of room, so I decided we'd better finish it. There was no way we could eat up all of it raw (as good as it had been), so it was a matter of how to cook it.

My usual salmon dish is to flake it up with some pasta, or just to bake it in the oven. But with a whole slab, I could try something else! Also sitting in my fridge was a ready-rolled piece of puff pastry and a bag of spinach. A quick google search of these three items told me to make salmon en croûte - a beef wellington without the beef and with salmon instead!

I think I've only tried salmon en croûte once, and it was deliciously moist and succulent salmon wrapped with a light airy and crispy pastry. I was salivating already!

 Fresh baby spinach leaves (the whole 200g pack - washed and ready to go) went into the pan.

While I waited for the spinach to wilt, I tended to the bulk of salmon (minus the chunk we ate for sashimi the night before!) Now the salmon I bought still had skin and bones, so you'll need to take it off if that's the same as yours, then you can clean it off and wipe it dry.

After browsing various recipes,  I decided I liked the look of this one from Gordon Ramsay (when do I not like the look of GR recipes?) and this other one from Woman and Home. They both sandwich a layer of green things between two pieces of salmon, so I cut up my salmon so that I would have a bottom bit and a some top bits. It doesn't matter do you like to do it, as long as its fits together neatly like a puzzle.

Back to the spinach! When it was all wilting, I zested in the zest of a lemon, and seasoned it lightly with some salt and pepper. Then you can remove it from the heat, and set aside to drain.

Or better, put all the spinach into a sieve and squeeze all the life water out of it with the back of a spoon. This is why you need the zest, because if you used the juice, it would all be squeezed out. The more effort you spend on wringing dry your spinach, the better the pastry will turn out, because there won't be all that excess water creating problems.

There is supposed to be 200g of spinach there. What happened to all of it???

Once your happy with your spinach, you can roughly chop it up, although it's probably not necessary (it's just so that it's not one massive clump) and stir in a small knob of butter, enough to make it form a pastey consistency. Crème fraîche could also be used but I find it a little too rich.

Now we're ready to build our parcel. Start by seasoning the salmon. We're going to bone side to the face the middle of the parcel, so leave that side up and season it with some salt and pepper.

Now decide which bit(s) you want for the top and which you want to be on the bottom. I recommend that the thicker piece be for the bottom and the thinner pieces for the top (if there's a difference). Smear the top with some wholegrain mustard and the bottom with the spinach paste.

Then put the top salmon on the bottom salmon, so that the sides smeared with mustard and spinach meet! Time to wrap it up!

Place the salmon onto the rolled out pastry sheet. If yours isn't pre-rolled, aim for the thickness of a £1 coin.

I made a mistake here - I directly transferred mine parcel on, so the bottom piece is still on the bottom here, but this meant that once it was wrapped up, the bottom became the top (because you'll want the seam to be on the bottom!) if you get what I mean. SO in order for you not to make this mistake, please flip your salmon sandwich upside down (i.e. salmon with mustard on the bottom and salmon with spinach on the top) so its the right way up. Although it's only really important if you've got a thick and thin bit of salmon like me, because as you'll see later, the thin side doesn't support the filling as well.

Brush the pastry around the salmon with some egg wash (beaten egg) and season with salt and peppers lightly. Then wrap it like a pressie. A very yummy pressie. The egg wash will help stick the pastry down.

When you've wrapped it, place it in a baking tray (lined if you want) with the seams tucked underneath. Score the top with the back of a knife in a criss cross pattern, taking care not the cut through it (just drag it along lightly - you don't need to use any strength at all!) and score portions if you wish as well. Brush some more egg wash over the top so it bakes with a beautiful golden colour.

Cover and chill for 15-30 minutes or so while you preheat your oven. Yep you gotta wait! I know you're looking forward to tucking in, but chilling it helps it hold its shape that bit better, so it's worth it in the end.

Then when you've baked it for 20-25 minutes at 180˚C in a fan oven (200˚C normal oven), it should look like this.

Beautifully golden!

Leave it to rest 5 minutes (more waiting I know, sorry!) before you cut into it, so set your table, tidy up your kitchen, pour some drinks, stare and drool, and then you can dig in!

The salmon was just perfect (it probably finished cooking while I rested it), so flavoursome and succulent. It was just flaking away and complemented so well by the crispy pastry, and lemony spinach.

The only thing about this was that it had a soggy bottom. This could've been due to various things, which I'll have to change for next time to see if it makes a difference:

• not dehydrating the spinach well enough
• too much spinach? or butter?
• the salmon on the bottom not thick enough (see above about flipping the salmon over)
• not patting dry the salmon well enough

But it was delicious all the same. Try it for yourself! This side of salmon had a chunk missing and still easily fed 4 grown starving students, so it's a great for families and friends!