Vanilla kisses

It has been a week since I baked and ate these biscuits and I miss them already. Although not the most visually stunning batch of biscuits, as their piped shape melted in the oven, they were very tasty indeed.

These kisses have a melt-in-your-mouth shortbread quality with the added bonus of a slightly custardy flavour. If that doesn't sound tempting enough, they are sandwiched together with a deliciously aromatic, sweet, vanilla butter icing.

If you're a die hard custard cream fan you may find yourself eating three of these in one sitting (.... don't look at me like that, I like biscuits, ok?)

I burnt my thumb on the top oven shelf whilst putting the trays in to bake. Needless to say I was not impressed. However I forgive the oven (obviously it wasn't my fault, the shelf attacked me) as I really enjoyed these little sandwich biscuits. They were worth the momentary pain.

Vanilla kisses

Recipe from Lakeland's Cupcakes and Cookies

125g butter, softened

110g caster sugar

1 egg

50g plain flour

35g self-raising flour

100g cornflour

30g custard powder

vienna cream filling:

60g butter

1/2 tsp vanilla extract (Good quality please! It makes all the difference)

120g icing sugar

2 tsp milk

Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan assisted/ Gas 6. Grease two oven trays/sheets with butter then line with baking parchment. Beat together the butter, sugar and egg until light and fluffy. Sift together your dry ingredients in a separate bowl before adding to the butter mixture in two batches. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a 1cm fluted tube (I used a wilton 1M nozzle) and pipe 3cm  rosettes, swirling from the outside inwards, 3cm apart on the trays. (My shapes didn't hold at all in the oven. Perhaps putting them in the fridge for 30 minutes before baking would help retain the swirls?) Bake for 10 minutes (keeping a close eye on them as the edges can burn fast!) Leave to cool on the trays.

For the filling, beat together the butter, vanilla extract, icing sugar and milk until the mixture goes fluffy and white. Use to sandwich the biscuits together. (I had to make a little extra as I was generous with my sandwiching. No one wants a stingy filling.)

The recipe should make roughly 20 sandwiched kisses in total.

Earl grey tea loaf

There's something a bit old fashioned about a tea loaf so it only seemed appropriate to photograph it with my 1940s Berylware crockery.

This loaf is a great way of using up questionable looking dried fruit as soaking them in the tea plumps them up beautifully. Nobody would know that they are quite possibly past their sell by date.

 

The fruit bursts with orange flavour in this very citrussy flavoured loaf although I think the star of this bake is the syrup topping. It's like a sticky, sweet marmalade. The zingy-ness of it contrasts well the heavier texture of the loaf.

I like to think that this is a healthy bake because of the amount of fruit it contains: dried cranberries, sultanas, raisins, orange and lemon. That's your 5-a-day covered! It's also dairy free.

My only slight niggle is the amount tea flavour. Although Earl Grey is a citrus tea (a black tea blended with the flavour of bergamot oranges) I felt its distinctive flavour didn't quite come through with this loaf (for me anyway) despite the overall flavour being very orangey. If I made this again I would perhaps brew the tea a little longer before adding to the dried fruit.

And that's the end of my mini tea series, hope you enjoyed it! A massive thank you to the folks at Whittards for giving me a lovely tea selection to bake with.

I'm also entering this bake into Kat's Sweet Leftovers Link Party as my dried fruit was on the brink of being thrown out.

Earl grey tea loaf

I came across multiple variations of this Jamie Oliver recipe online. I don't know what the exact recipe is, but this is what I did:

4 earl grey teabags (courtesy of Whittards)

100g dried cranberries

200g sultanas

100g raisins

1 orange, zest and juice

1 duck egg

200g golden caster sugar

400g self-raising flour

1 level tsp. mixed spice

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ginger

1 lemon, zest and juice

100g caster sugar

200ml water

2 earl grey tea bags

Pour 300ml of boiling water over 4 teabags in a jug. Leave to brew for 5 minutes then remove the teabags. Put all your dried fruit and orange zest in a bowl and pour in the brewed tea. Stir, cover with clingfilm and leave overnight (or if you're a night time baker like me, leave them to soak all day.)

Preheat the oven to Gas 4 and line a 1l loaf tin. Beat the egg in a separate bowl before adding to the soaked fruit. Then add the sugar, flour, spices and orange juice. Mix well and put into the tin. Bake in the centre of the oven for 1hr 10 minutes or until golden on top and a skewer/knife is clean when inserted into the centre of the loaf. Mine actually took about 1hr 30 minutes to cook, covering the top with baking parchment for the last 15-20 minutes to prevent it from burning. Start making the syrup in the last 5-10 minutes of the loaf baking.

For the syrup topping, place 2 teabags in a saucepan with the water, lemon juice and zest. Gently bring to the boil, removing the teabags after a couple of minutes. Add the sugar and bring back to the boil without stirring. On a medium heat let it boil steadily for 5-10 minutes until the mixture has reduced by half and is syrupy. Prick the cake and pour/brush the syrup on top of the cake and leave the loaf to cool in the tin.

Disclaimer: I was sent tea products to bake with as Whittards recognised that I'm a cake/biscuit obsessed crazy tea lady. They're a brand I enjoy and have purchased from before. I was not paid for this post and all opinions expressed are my own.

Vanilla chai tea latte cake

I had a chai-normous amount of fun baking this cake. (HA! See what I did there?)

Awful puns aside, I was really pleased with this cake. I immediately knew what I wanted to bake when I saw instant vanilla chai in my bundle of goodies from Whittards: a fluffy, spiced, brown sugar sponge with a sweet, vanilla cream cheese butter icing. The homemade stencil decoration was a last minute addition to cover up my slightly lumpy icing (perhaps my butter was too cold?) and I think it looks fun although I may have been a tad overzealous with my cinnamon dusting as it caught the back of my throat a little when eating the cake!

 
I wasn't sure how much the vanilla chai flavour would come through (I baked this while my biscuit dough was in the fridge) but it worked really well. I thought there was a good balance between warm, cinnamony spices and vanilla sweetness.


It actually took a couple of weeks to get round to baking as I was enjoying just drinking the vanilla chai, but I'm glad I eventually did. I'm definitely making this cake again providing I don't drink all the chai first.

For a bit of fun I put a different flavour of instant chai in each cup for myself, my brother and mum to try. Out of the three we all liked the vanilla chai the most. I liked its sweeter edge over the spiced chai (I do have a raging sweet tooth after all) although the spiced chai was more refreshing and, well, spiced (you can tell I'm going to be inundated with product reviews with descriptions like that.) The chocolate chai was lovely too and makes a nice alternative to hot chocolate if you want something comforting but not as sickly sweet.

Hope you're all enjoying my tea series! I'll be back with my final tea themed bake on Sunday.

Vanilla chai tea latte cake
Own recipe 

Sponges:
200g (7oz) soft light brown sugar
200g (7oz) margarine
3 large (7oz) eggs
170g (6oz) self-raising flour
30g (1oz) instant vanilla chai
2 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Cream cheese butter icing:
300g icing sugar
50g softened butter
175g cream cheese
a few drops of vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line two 20cm round cake tins. Beat together the sugar and margarine until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating between each addition, and add a tablespoon of the flour with the last egg to stop the mixture from curdling. Add the flour, chai, milk, cinnamon and vanilla and mix everything together until just fully incorporated. Divide the batter between the two tins and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for approx. 25 minutes until risen, golden and springy to touch. Leave to cool in the tins for around 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

For the icing just beat everything together for a few minutes until light and fluffy and use to fill and top the cake. For some reason the butter stayed a bit lumpy with me but wasn't too visually horrifying and still tasted fine. Finish with a dusting of cinnamon.

Disclaimer: I was sent tea products to bake with as Whittards recognised that I'm a cake/biscuit obsessed crazy tea lady. They're a brand I enjoy and have purchased from before. I was not paid for this post and all opinions expressed are my own.

Chai latte biscuits

I love chai tea, or "ninja tea" as it's referred to in my family as mum once asked if I was going to order a tai chi latte in a cafe. We like our tea martial arts style.

 

Sadly I do not own any ninja shaped biscuits cutters, however I do have a cute teapot shaped cutter which I've had for about 3 years but never used. Perfect for tea flavoured biscuits!

 

I was a bit late jumping on the chai tea band wagon, only discovering it last year, so when Whittards offered me some flavours from their instant chai tea range to bake with I was more than a little bit excited.

 

For the biscuits I altered a Peggy Porschen biscuit recipe, adding chocolate chai to one half of the dough and the spiced chai to the other. I piped melted chocolate on to the chocolate chai batch to enhance the chocolate flavour which I felt was a nice touch visually and flavour wise. Both batches were subtley spiced and crispy and had a lovely, creamy after taste; surprisingly moreish and perfect for dipping in a milky drink, although I photographed mine with an ordinary chai tea to keep the chai theme going.

 

My only complaint is that a few of the biscuits were a bit tough/chewy as I must have overhandled the dough when rerolling but other than that I was very happy with them.

 

I think the instant chai worked really well in the biscuits. Now I'm debating whether I should try adding some of my flavoured hot chocolates to my baking.

Stay tuned for some more tea themed bakes! I'm going to have a bit of a tea series and will post my next bake within the next few days.

 

Chocolate chai and spiced chai latte biscuits

Recipe altered from Peggy Porschen's chocolate teaspoon biscuits in Boutique Baking.

200g unsalted butter

100g caster sugar

100g soft light brown sugar

pinch of salt

1 egg

175g plain flour and 25g instant chocolate chai

175g plain flour and 25g instant spiced chai

Line a couple of baking trays with greaseproof paper. Beat together the butter, salt and sugars until smooth. Beat the egg in another bowl and slowly add to the butter mixture until fully incorporated. Divide the mixture between two bowls and add the flour and chocolate chai powder to one half and flour and spiced chai powder to the other. Mix until the doughs just come together, gather into balls and wrap them separately in cling film. Chill for 30 minutes.

Place the dough on a floured surface and knead briefly. Roll the dough 3-4mm thick and cut out shapes using a cutter. (I used different cutters for each batch so I wouldn't get confused between flavours.) Place the biscuits onto the prepared trays and chill again for another 30 minutes. Meanwhile preheat your oven to 175C/Gas 3.

Bake for 6 minutes or until the biscuits spring back to touch (mine took about 10 minutes). Once baked, leave them on their trays to cool for about 30 minutes. Decorate with piped icing or melted chocolate once fully cool although they work absolutely fine as plain biscuits too.

Disclaimer: I was sent tea products to bake with as Whittards recognised that I'm a cake/biscuit obsessed crazy tea lady. They're a brand I enjoy and have purchased from before. I was not paid for this post and all opinions expressed are my own.