Tea Cake
Baking and Desserts | Scandinavian cuisine
⏳ Time
1 hour 30 minutes + 12 hours
🥕 Ingredients
8
🍽️ Servings
12
Description
This tea cake has been baked for many years at the legendary bakery on the Champs-Élysées, a paragon of French elegance and style. We were fortunate to uncover its secrets from the head pastry chef at the local branch of the bakery. It turns out that recreating this recipe at home is a manageable task; it is essential to measure the grams and minutes accurately and follow the steps precisely. The cake is named after the signature tea blend 'Marie Antoinette', which features notes of citrus, rose petals, and honey. However, you can use any other tea blend for baking; Earl Grey with its vibrant bergamot aroma works wonderfully, as does green tea with jasmine, rooibos which adds a floral fragrance and a rosy hue, or a rich black tea like Darjeeling. In any case, the tea will infuse into the cake through an infusion, a term used by pastry chefs to describe the steeping of tea leaves—in this recipe, it’s a steeping in cream. Over 12 hours, the cream will absorb the aroma and flavor of the tea and impart it to the cake batter, which is where the magic lies.
Ingredients
- 33% Cream - 8 fl oz
- Black tea - 1.2 oz
- Chicken Egg - 11.6 oz
- Wheat Flour - 11.1 oz
- Baking Powder - 0.2 oz
- Butter - 7.1 oz
- Sugar - 3.2 oz
- Pastry gel - to taste
Step by Step guide
Step 1
To infuse, pour 200 ml of cream into a bowl, add 30 grams of dry tea leaves, and stir. Leave the bowl with the mixture in the refrigerator for 12 hours. To prevent any aromas from escaping, cover the mixture with plastic wrap, ensuring it touches the surface of the cream.
Step 2
After 12 hours, strain the cream. Weigh it and add more cream until you reach a total volume of 165 ml.
Step 3
Pour the cream into the mixing bowl, add the sugar, and mix on low speed. While continuing to mix, add the eggs to the bowl.
Step 4
Sift the flour with the baking powder. Gradually add the flour to the mixing bowl in three portions, continuing to knead the dough.
Step 5
Melt 150 grams of butter in a saucepan over medium heat until it reaches a boil, then pour it into the mixing bowl. Mix until smooth. The boiling butter is absorbed more quickly by the flour and combines more easily with the other ingredients, resulting in a perfectly smooth dough.
Step 6
At the end, mix in another 4 grams of dry tea leaves into the batter; this will add extra flavor to the cake. To avoid having tea leaves in the finished cake, you can grind the tea in a blender or simply crush it between your palms.
Step 7
Preheat the oven to 356°F. Take three rectangular cake pans measuring 8x16 cm and 6.5 cm deep, and line them with parchment paper. Divide the batter among the pans and smooth the tops.
Step 8
Place some softened butter into a piping bag and pipe a strip of butter evenly down the center of the cake batter. This technique is used by pastry chefs to ensure that the tops of the risen cakes are beautiful and symmetrical, or, in professional terms, that the cakes are properly opened.
Step 9
Bake the cupcakes on the middle rack of the oven for 10 minutes to allow the batter to rise and set. Then gradually lower the temperature, first to 320°F (320 degrees Fahrenheit), and bake the cupcakes for another 15 minutes. Next, reduce the temperature to 302°F (302 degrees Fahrenheit) and leave the cupcakes in the oven for an additional 20 minutes. This temperature setting will ensure the cupcakes are perfectly baked and develop a nice, even golden crust. Check for doneness with a toothpick: if it comes out clean, the cupcakes are done.
Step 10
Remove the cupcakes from the oven and allow them to cool completely. Next, you need to add a glaze to give the surface a shiny finish. This can be done in two ways: either brush them with a neutral glaze or, more simply, heat some apricot or orange jam over low heat and apply it with a brush. Decorate the cupcakes to your liking.
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