Tea and Cake

Having talked earlier about how we rarely accept items to sample, I’m going to talk about another item I happily said yes to now. This time it was tea and the new range from PG Tips.

I love tea and I drink loads of it. I like it strong and I like it to be Twinings English Breakfast. I will drink other tea but I don’t like it as much. I do however like this new PG Tips tea. Of the three, I naturally preferred The Strong One, it’s very similar to the English Breakfast I favour and is the one I reach for first thing in the morning. Later on, I move on to the The Fresh One which has a lighter flavour and is fruitier. The Delicate One I’m not so keen on. It’s decaffeinated (although it’s pretty good for decaffeinated tea actually) and just doesn’t have as much flavour as the other two.

Since we have so much of it and since I didn’t like it as much as the other two, I decided to use The Delicate One in a cake. This recipe from BBC Good Food is one of the first hits on Google and was perfect since I also had some old, dry raisins that needed using up – the recipe requires them to be soaked overnight in tea and orange juice so that they become plump and juicy.

It was easy to make and it rose well, something I was worried about since I’m not a confident baker. I added some cinnamon, ground cloves and vanilla extract to the mixture too which worked really well with the savoury flavour of the tea.

The comments on the original recipe say it keeps well and I can imagine eating it later in the week spread with butter and maybe some honey. With a cup of tea to accompany it, obviously.