Yorkshire Teabread

I have tried quite a number of teabreads over the years and I am always game for trying a new and different one. Teabread is a useful cake to have around - it keeps well and makes a good snack, being not too sweet. I always think it's especially good spread with a good layer of butter! This recipe came from one of the Waitrose recipe cards which caught my eye as I was doing some shopping recently. I like the fact that it even states on the recipe card that it was created to celebrate Yorkshire Day on the 1st August. I may be a little late, but better late than never.

I can't find the recipe on the Waitrose website at the moment, but will keep checking to see if it's there. The recipes I usually use involve making strong tea (Yorkshire tea would be perfect here!) and soaking the dried fruit overnight. This recipe specifies making the tea and then leaving the fruit for at least an hour. I actually left mine about six hours, because I was doing other things, so it had plenty of time to plump up. I increased the spice in the recipe slightly - 1/4tsp isn't much so my 1/4tsp was rather generous! I also couldn't locate my glace cherries (for a good reason... being that most of my kitchen was relocated to my living room and things were piled on top of each other!) so used dried cranberries instead.

Quite a small loaf - just a 1lb (450g) tin and quite shallow, but tasty nevertheless. The teabread curdled quite badly as I was making it and I really wondered how on earth it would turn out to be edible, but I needn't have worried. This was really delicious. There's a lot less fruit in it than the teabreads I usually make, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just different. The most noticeable and surprising thing about this cake was how soft it was - really, really tender and delicate. I guess the curdling didn't really matter at all then! Apologies for the particularly dark photographs - as part of moving everything in my kitchen out, my usual lightbox was out of action hence the more-than-usually rubbish photos!

I am entering this teabread into the Best of British challenge, hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage, and organised by Karen and Fiona of London Unattached. Many thanks to them for organising this challenge, which is being sponsored by New World Appliances for the first six months.

And as it is T for Teabread, I am also entering it into Alphabakes. This month the host is Ros of The More than Occasional Baker, and her co-host is Caroline of Caroline Makes.

Cinnamon and apple tea bread

One of my colleagues recently remarked that I must spend a fortune on ingredients with all the baking I do. This is true, but since I regard it as my hobby I don't really mind - there are worse things to spend my money on and generally quite enjoy baking. And although blog activity doesn't really reflect this, I have been doing quite a lot of baking recently. Anyway, my lovely colleague gave me some ingredients that she thought I might be able/like to use. (I can't quite tell if it was motivated by the desire to eat these ingredients in cake form, but even if it was, I don't mind in the slightest - any gift is welcome!!!)

One of these ingredients was a bag of mixed dried fruit that needed to be used quite quickly. I have to admit that I don't usually buy mixed dried fruit bags. One of the reasons is the inclusion of the hideous chopped mixed peel that you usually find (candied peel that you chop yourself is a whole different matter, and quite delicious) but luckily this mix didn't include that. And before you ask, yes, I probably would have sat and picked it all out if there had been peel in there! This one was sold as 'American Style Fruit Mix'. I'm not quite sure what that means but perhaps somebody kind from over the pond will tell me whether or not a mix of chopped dates, raisins, sultanas and sweetened dried apple with cinnamon is a typical mix? Anyway, that's what this one contained.

Edited to add: It's this fruit mix here, I think my colleague must shop in Morrisons!

The mixture seemed to lend itself well to a tea bread and instead of the ones I have made here before, I decided to go with a tried and trusted favourite, one that J has been making for years. It was originally clipped out of the Guardian many, many years ago (and is by Katie Stewart in its original form) and has now been much modified and well used and loved. So here is the latest incarnation.

Cinnamon and apple tea bread

Ingredients

250g 'American Style Fruit Mix'

(or 75g chopped dates, 62g raisins, 62g sultanas, 50g dried apple, chopped)

200g glace cherries, chopped

425ml cold tea (although I used hot tea, couldn't find time to wait for it to cool!)

300g light muscovado sugar *** see note below

2 eggs, beaten

420g self raising flour

1 tsp cinnamon (or more if your dried fruit mix doesn't already contain cinnamon)

Method

- Make up tea (I used two tea bags and squidged them about a bit - you want strong tea here). Add the sugar and dried fruit, mix, cover with cling film and leave overnight.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C and grease and line two 2lb/900g loaf tins.

- Add the glace cherries (though you could do this the night before if it's easier) and mix well to mix the cherries through and redistribute the sugar, which tends to settle at the bottom of the bowl overnight.

- Add the flour and beaten eggs and beat well to combine.

- Divide between two tins and bake for 55 minutes. A wooden cocktail stick inserted should come out clean.

- Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.

*** I realised as I was typing this up that I had decided when soaking the fruit that I would make the original quantity of mix (2/3 of the quantity stated) but then changed my mind and went for J's option of 1.5x mix quantity. I forgot to increase the sugar though. This is why it's never a good idea to write down recipes with 1.5x at the top and not amend the amounts, or decide half way through to amend the recipe without thinking the whole thing through. D'oh. Last time J made this she forgot to increase the flour and realised just after pouring the mix into the prepared tins that this was the reason it was so runny. She salvaged it fine, but I didn't realise until far too late about the sugar!

Great served buttered (see above!!!) but good all on its own. This type of (virtually, if you're being fussy about egg yolks and flour containing some fat) fat free tea bread always goes down well round these parts and this one is no exception. Lovely and moist and perfect at morning tea break. I have to admit that I couldn't really taste the dates as an individual flavour and wouldn't have known the dried apple pieces were there unless you'd told me. Nevertheless, the cinnamon flavour was great and made a bit of a change from my normal flavours in this recipe.

Earl Grey Cupcakes

I can't believe I haven't updated for so long - I really am still alive and have actually been baking quite a lot recently, but being busy at work has put paid to having any time to blog about any of it! I now have an enormous backlog of things to blog, so decided to make a start with these.

I mentioned a while ago that I had bought the Primrose Bakery Cupcake recipe book (at a bargain price) and I'm so glad that I did - I've made lots out of it (possibly more than any other book I own, certainly for the number of recipes in it) and there are lots more bookmarked to make. I don't know what made me decide on Earl Grey as the next flavour to make after the Lemon Cupcakes - I don't drink tea as I don't really like it! I had, however, bought a mixed packet of tea bags for the odd occasion when a desire to make teabread strikes, and in the mix there were earl grey teabags. This recipe seemed as good a time as any to use them up and see what tea in a cupcake is like.

The recipe is very similar to the vanilla cupcake recipe here, the introduction of the earl grey tea flavour is via steeping tea bags in warm milk and allowing to cool before adding to the cake mixture. I found with the lemon cupcakes that they were quite large and so decided to see if I could get more out of the mixture by making mini cupcakes too, which was a successful tactic - I had a dozen full sized and a dozen mini cupcakes and none looked as though I had skimped on the batter.

Good? Yep! I was really pleased with these. The tea flavour was really subtle and as I had expected this to be the case I went with an unflavoured glace icing so as not to interfere with the flavour. Good decision as the icing added the necessary sweetness without masking the subtle flavour. I think if you didn't know what the flavour was it would be hard to guess, but there was just a hint of perfumed aroma more than anything I suppose. Hard to describe but delicious to eat.

As an aside, I also made a coffee layer cake for a colleague's (significant) birthday recently from the book. It differed slightly from my previous coffee cakes because the recipe says that at the end, just before spooning the mixture into the prepared tins, you marble through the extremely strong coffee mixture, creating a beautiful marbled cake. When the cake is cooked and cool it is drenched in a coffee syrup, making it incredibly moist before being sandwiched and topped with a coffee buttercream icing. I decorated it with chocolate coffee beans (very popular at work!). I wish I'd managed to get a photo of it because it looked incredibly light and moist and very pretty with the marbling, but I was too embarrassed to photograph it at work... The birthday girl was delighted though, and many compliments were received from the assembled crowd at work when it and the other presents were given. Definitely a make again recipe and I might borrow the idea of the syrup for other cakes too.