Apple & Earl Grey Cake

If you like tea, especially the Earl Grey one… well, you’re in the right place. 

Personally, I’m a huge fan of this blend and I think that it’s perfect for cakes, cupcakes and buttercream. Around the Web, you can find plenty of recipes of stuff flavoured with Earl Grey, but if you don’t have much time for the kitchen adventures or you have unexpected guests in your house… you need to try this recipe. It’s pretty simple, fluffy and super delicious!

Also you can go on an experiment spree and change the fruity ingredients! First time I made this cake, I put in the batter a lot of banana slices and blueberries. It wasn’t actually an Earl Grey flavoured version, but it was amazing anyway.

INGREDIENTS:

240g plain flour

135g caster sugar

15g baking powder

pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 eggs (lightly beaten)

250ml milk

100g butter (melted)

3 Earl Grey tea bags

150g apples (grated)

8-10 cardamom pods

white pepper

lemon juice

METHOD:

First of all, you need to prepare the Earl Grey & cardamom milk. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it comes to a boil, then remove it from the heat and add the tea bags and crushed cardamom pods. Leave for an hour until cool and flavourful - if you don’t have much time, leave it for the time of preparing other ingredients, then put the saucepan in a bowl with water and ice cubes. You must be sure that the milk isn’t too hot, otherwise it could partially cook the batter.

Preheat the oven to 180℃.

In a small mixing bowl, mix grated apples, a pinch of white pepper and a few drops of lemon juice together. Put it aside for a while - the apples should lose a bit of juice.  

Next, sift the first 4 dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Give them a little whisk and make a well in the centre of the mixture. Add the eggs and the vanilla extract and start whisking. Then pour slowly the flavoured milk (remember to remove the cardamom pods first) and finally the melted butter, still whisking. The texture should be a bit more dense than a pancake batter.

Finally, squeeze out excess juice from the apples, put them into the bowl with the batter and whisk again.

Place a sheet of parchment paper on the bottom of the cake pan (my cake pan is 24cm) and put the mixture in it. Bake for 25-30min.

You can serve it in different ways:

- hot/warm with vanilla ice cream 

- warm/cold, dusted with icing sugar
- with sweet cream cheese and fresh, crunchy apples
- with vanilla sauce

Release your creativity! There’s only one rule: you can’t miss a cup of hot Earl Grey!

Song of the day: Sia - You're never fully dressed without a smile

Buckwheat Pancakes

It’s this time of the year when I need to stop for a while and get myself ready for the hot and almost endless, Mediterranean summer. I need to catch the last fresh breezes before they completely vanish in the middle of hellfire vortex - yeah, I’m totally a winter-y creature and I can barely handle with hot temperatures but I’ll hopefully survive even this year. Hopefully...

Recently, I’ve been seeking for a recipe that would soothe these kinda hot-ish, kinda still fresh-y days which I’m basically spending at working and worrying about my unknown future. You know, something sweet but not sickly sweet, something “light” and crisp, and with a possible usage of the buckwheat flour, as I found a full package of it in my kitchen pantry.

Many of my friends and family members don’t really like the buckwheat flour. It has a particular, strong and kinda nutty flavour and might seem a strange ingredient, especially for sweet stuff, but I’m pretty convinced that it’s one of the greatest alternatives/supplements to the plain flour that would make your cakes/cookies/pancakes more interesting and healthy as well. Although its sturdy flavour doesn’t allow us to substitute completely the plain flour or pop it in its own recipes, we can create different types of flour mixtures, even the gluten free ones.

After a quick brainstorm with myself, I opted for the majestic buckwheat pancakes! Yes! 

In this case, the proportion between plain and buckwheat flour is 50-50 - you can put less buckwheat flour if you feel like its flavour is too strong for you. At least, it’s important to have 130g of the flour mixture.

I filled them up in two different (and my personal favourite) ways: cream cheese + strawberries and the old classic one, lemon + sugar. Garnished with sunflower seeds, fresh strawberry sauce and caster sugar. Supercalifragilisticexpialideliscious!

INGREDIENTS:

PANCAKES (makes 8-10 small/medium pancakes):

65g plain flour

65g buckwheat flour

2 eggs

210ml milk + 75ml water

1 tbsp sunflower oil

1/2 tsp caster sugar

1/4 tsp salt

butter

FILLING:

Cream cheese + Strawberries

400g fresh strawberries + 60g for the sauce

250g cream cheese

2 tbsp icing sugar

white pepper

1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

Lemon + Sugar

1-2 lemons

caster sugar

+ sunflower seeds

METHOD:

Sift the flours into a large mixing bowl - some types of sieves may entrap half of the buckwheat (especially the brown/black particles). Just make sure that the flour gets air and any lump goes sifted, then pour the residual into a bowl and make a well in the centre of the flour mixture. Break the eggs into it, add sugar and salt, and start whisking.

Once approximately amalgamated, add the milk and water mixture in 3 steps. Make sure any lumps disappear and finally add the sunflower oil. The batter is done!

Now, preheat a pan (make sure it is really hot) and melt 1/2 teaspoon of butter in it. Once melted, do a "pancake test" to see if you’re using the right amount of batter - I usually pour half of a ladle in a 20cm pan.

Cook until it separates from the pan and become golden on the edges. It takes less or more 2-3 minutes for both sides.

The filling is pretty simple to prepare. Beat cream cheese and icing sugar in a medium mixing bowl until smooth and fluffy. If you want to add some extra flavour like vanilla extract, mix it with a tablespoon of whole milk before putting it into the cream cheese mixture. Then beat for another 30 seconds.

Cut strawberries in slices, place them in another mixing bowl, pour a pinch of white pepper on them and stir, gently.

Strawberry sauce? Nothing easier. Put strawberries in a blender, add 1 teaspoon of caster sugar and blend until smooth. Done!

Spread a bit of sweet cream cheese on a half of each pancake and put pepper-y strawberries on it. Then fold it in half, then in half again to form a triangle. Splash with strawberry sauce. 

For the Lemon + Sugar pancakes, you don’t have to do nothing but squeeze lemon juice on each pancake, sprinkle them with caster sugar and fold in triangles. 

Sprinkle with sunflower seeds and devour them all!

Song of the day: Walk the Moon - Work This Body