tea

Lemon, Earl Grey & Poppyseed Shortbread Biscuits

- Michael 4 Comments

Earl Grey, Lemon & Poppy Seed Shortbread

I’ve been lacking on the recipe posts the last few weeks. Sorry! I’ve been pretty hectic and been out of the house a lot/getting to grips with the new kitchen and being given the chance to go to a ton of fun events. I’ve baked a few things but outside of the bread I uploaded previously, and I’ve not gotten the snaps that I necessarily wanted, which for me can be a sticking point. However, on a recent trip down to Brighton with work (these work trips won’t be happening for much longer, more on that to come), I let my eye be caught by some fancy biscuits in M&S while I was in Victoria station. The fancy biscuits were Lemon, Earl Grey & Poppyseed Butter Shortbread.
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Camomile & Honey Cupcakes

- Michael 4 Comments

I have some problems with my stomach. I’ve had them for years. The last time I went to the doctors they tried to find out what was wrong with it to no avail (or at least what was triggering it). Due to these problems I spend a lot of time drinking herbal teas that are designed for soothing the stomach or aiding digestion. These include ginger, peppermint (although peppermint is far from my first choice) and Camomile (usually camomile & honey or camomile & maple). Camomile is an anti-spasmodic, which happens to be one of my favourite words especially when you say it to someone that hasn’t heard it before. As a result of this I’ve been wanting to bake camomile & honey cupcakes for a while, and just not gotten around to it. The recipe I used was based on this one here.

 
Camomile & Honey Cupcakes
 
Camomile & Honey Cupcakes

January has, as usual, hit the wallet pretty hard and I’ve been having to greatly cut back on spending for the last couple of weeks. The great thing with these, is that outside of the cream, I already had everything already in stock.  It wasn’t until I got home and took a look at Timehop that it reminded me it was a year ago, to the day, that I last baked tea themed cupcakes. Last year it was Green Tea Cupcakes & Matcha Frosting (I’ve since improved on this by doing the cakes as purely chocolate and making the frosting Matcha & White Chocolate).

 
Camomile & Honey Cupcakes

 
Camomile & Honey Cupcakes

I am going to be kicking off my “Baking Basics” posts at the start of February. As I detailed in my previous “2015 Goals” post, I want to properly teach myself how to bake (i.e. how it works, why you use certain ratios of ingredients and how to do certain techniques etc.) this year. Does anyone have any suggestions for basics I could include?

Camomile & Honey Cupcakes

Camomile & Honey Cupcakes
 
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Author:
Serves: 12 cupcakes
Ingredients
  • **For the cakes**
  • 60g Unsalted Butter (At room temperature)
  • 125g All-Purpose Flour
  • 150g Granulated White Sugar
  • 1tsp Baking Powder
  • ½tsp Bicarb of Soda
  • 3tbsp Dried Camomile (I used camomile tea bags)
  • 120ml Milk
  • 1 Large Egg
  • **For the glaze**
  • 190g Powdered Icing Sugar
  • 5tbsp Double Cream
  • 2tbsp Honey
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 160°C and line a cupcake tray with cases.
  2. Cream together the butter and the sugar before mixing in the flour, baking powder and bicarb of soda.
  3. Whisk the milk and the egg seperately and pour into the dry mixture, mixing constantly while adding.
  4. Add in the camomile (and I sometimes add a squeeze of honey here too) and mix until well combined.
  5. DIvide the mixture evenly between the 12 cases. There should be exactly enough to fill them to about half way each, you'll need to scrape the sides of the bowl.
  6. Place in the middle of the preheated oven and bake for 15-17 minutes (until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean).
  7. Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.
  8. While the cool, make the glaze. Cream together the sugar, cream and honey until smooth and thick.
  9. With a kitchen knife or small palette knife spread the glaze on top of the cakes.
 

 

Green Tea Cupcakes with Matcha Frosting

- Michael 3 Comments

It’s January. Therefore everyone is full slap bang in the middle of their “detox”, right? Because obviously, one month of doing vaguely healthier things makes the other 11 months of debauchery and junk food ok (Disclaimer: My lifestyle is awful, I am not judging anyone for trying to be positive). In keeping with this I thought this would be a perfect time to try something from the Hummingbird Bakery book I was given at Christmas. What else says detox like Green Tea? Or Matcha powder (the bloody expensive thing that it is)? Of course, if you mix both of these things with butter, sugar and chocolate they are still healthy, right? Yeah, sure, let’s go with that. Having said that, other than the sugar it’s a fairly small amount of the other ingredients, so these won’t hit the waste quite as much as many of the other things I bake.

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I’d advise planning ahead with these too. You need to give the green tea bags plenty of time in the milk (overnight ideally) so that they transfer enough of the flavour across to the cold milk. The matcha powder brings the majority of the green tea flavour and is a great addition to the frosting. I’ve been recommended using it with white chocolate, so I’ll definitely be doing some white chocolate matcha frosting sometime soon.

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Notes:

  • This makes a particularly small batch of cupcakes, only 12, but the recipe could be very easily doubled or more.
  • I used more Matcha powder than in this recipe (by accident), if I was doing it again I’d be much more careful. It made the frosting much more bitter. This meant they got much more mixed reviews.

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Grean Tea Cupcakes with Matcha Frosting
 
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Serves: 12
Ingredients
  • 120ml whole milk
  • 3 green tea bags
  • 100g plain flour
  • 20g cocoa powder
  • 140g caster sugar
  • 1½ tsp baking powder
  • a pinch of salt
  • 40g unsalted butter at room temperature
  • 1 egg
  • ¼ tsp vanilla extract
  • For the green tea frosting
  • 250g icing sugar, sifted
  • 80g unsalted butter at room temperature
  • 20g Matcha green tea powder, plus extra to decorate (you can buy this from tea shops and specialist Asian supermarkets).
  • 25ml whole milk
Instructions
  1. Measure out the milk and add the tea bags. Put these in a sealed container in the fridge for several hours in advance (overnight if possible).
  2. Preheat the oven to 170°C (150°C fan) and line a 12 hole cupcake tray with paper cases.
  3. Mix the dry ingredients together and add the softened butter. Using an electric mixer with a paddle attachment beat on a low speed until it has a sandy consistency.
  4. Combine the eggs, milk and vanilla together. Slowly add in half of the mixture to the dry mix. Beat on high until there are no lumps. Turn down to a low speed and slowly poor in the rest of the mix. Continue to mix it until it’s smooth.
  5. Spoon in to the cases to about ⅔ full. Place in the middle of the oven for about 20-25 minutes. They’ll be done when they bounce back when pressed lightly or a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Allow to cool slightly in the tray before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.
  6. For the green tea frosting beat together the sugar, butter and matcha powder until well combined on a medium to low speed. Turn down to a low speed and slowly pour in the milk. Once it is incorporated turn the speed up to high and beat for 5 minutes.
  7. Apply to the cool cupcakes.

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