LEMON & EARL GRAY CAKE

This is a very tart, very intense lemony cake that comes together with basic ingredients by just combining all the wet ingredients and then adding the dry ingredients. I use lemons and limes, but it could totally be made with just lemons. Also this cake uses oil instead of butter because the beautiful butter flavour gets lost in the intense tartness so it seems like a waste to use butter, and oil also keeps the cake moist (moister?) for longer, but you could totally sub butter or use half olive oil and half vegetable oil.

There’s a bit of juicing of lemons and limes involved so if you have any cuts on your hand, you’re in for a world of pain. Bewares.

It makes a good amount, filling a 102(H) x 305(W) x 102(D)mm Loaf Tin.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 tea bags of earl gray

• 3 lemons

• 2 limes

• 300g sugar

• 4 eggs

• 200g vegetable oil or 250g room temp butter

• 200g Greek yogurt

• 500g flour

• 1 tsp baking soda

• 2 tsp baking Powder

• 1 tsp salt

• 50g powdered sugar

INSTRUCTIONS

• Preheat the oven to 170*C / 350*F

• Dump out the contents of the 2 earl gray bags of tea and splash 20-30g of boiling water on it so the ground tea leaves can steep. Set aside

• Zest all the lemons and limes into a big bowl for all our wet ingredients

• Add 300g of sugar to the zest and use your fingers to smush all the zested skin into the sugar to get all that oil out

• Scrape the earl gray tea concentrate to the sugar

• Add 200g of oil

• And add all 4 eggs (I crack the eggs into a separate bowl and then add them to the bigger bowl because it’s hard to find broken shell pieces in a bowl with lots of stuff in it, but that’s just me)

• Add 200g Greek Yogurt to the big bowl

• Mix everything really well with a whisk

• Whisk in 50g of citrus juice (about 1 lemon and 1 lime)

• Add 500g Flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 2 tsp baking powder, and a 1 tsp of salt. I like to measure the dry ingredients into a separate bowl and add the dry in 3 batches, so adding a third of the dry to the wet and giving it a few folds with a spatula and repeating the process until everything is incorporated

• Line your loaf tin with parchment paper

• The batter will be thick. Don’t worry! Pour it into the lined loaf tin

• Bake for 1 hour. Check by inserting a toothpick, it should come out clean. Or by temperature, it should read between 88*C / 190*F and 96*C / 205*F. It might take a bit longer, depending on your oven

• When the cake is done, poke a bunch of holes in the top with a toothpick or skewer while it’s still hot, and pour the glaze on it. I usually use the thermometer

• While the cake it baking, you can make your glaze which is just 50g of icing sugar / powdered sugar and the juice of the rest of the lemons/ limes, which is about 120g. I like to make the glaze in the same bowl that I soaked the tea leaves in so there’s a bit of residual tea in the glaze as well. Mix well and pour over the holes, so the super tart glaze soaks into the cake

• Let the cake cool completely in the tin

• Enjoy !