14th January 2014 // No Comments

Tuesday Recipe and Tutorial: Earl Grey, Apricot and Sultana Scones!

The majority of us promise to be even the tiniest bit more healthy in the new year; a delicious and easy way to do this is to incorporate fruits, nuts, and whole wheat into our diets. It’s much less scary to add chopped dried fruits into your baking and to try utilising some whole wheat flour into your batter than to subject yourself to tasteless diet food! With this in mind we’ve created this healthy yet satisfying recipe for you to re-create and enjoy at home. These fragrant Early Grey, Apricot and Sultana Scones are perfect for a quick snack, breakfast for as a treat if topped with whipped cream.

Earl Grey, Apricot and Sultana Scones

This recipe makes 8-12 normal sized scones (approx. the size of the top of a teacup).

125g plain flour
100g wholewheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
25g caster sugar
150ml milk
60g low fat butter alternative (e.g. Stork)
50-80g chopped dried apricots
80g sultanas
2 tablespoons of Earl Grey tea
1 beaten egg to glaze
Plain or scalloped circle cutters

Firstly, the Earl Grey tea needs to be infused into the butter. This needs to be done the day or night before so that the butter can reset. In a sauce pan melt the butter along with the Earl Grey tea. Leave this to simmer for around 15 minutes and stir constantly on medium heat. Once fragrant sieve the butter to remove the flecks of tea. You can leave the tea leaves in the butter, however, for this recipe we preferred to remove them. Pour the Earl Grey butter into an airtight container and chill until set.

Pre-heat the oven to 220C/425F/Gas 7. Lightly grease a flat baking tray or line with baking paper.

Mix together the flour and salt in a bowl. Then run in the butter to make crumb-like pieces. Add the sugar and then the milk. Gently mix together using clean hands.

Once the wet ingredients have been incorporated it is time to add in the chopped apricots and sultanas.

Pop your dough onto a flour dusted surface and lightly knead. Roll or pat to around 1 inch thick (to make mini sized scones). Use a 48mm cutter to cut either plain or scallop edged scones. Place around 2 inches apart on your baking tray.

Lightly brush the scones with the beaten egg mixture and bake for 12-15 minutes until golden.

Once the scones have cooled they’re ready to enjoy! Slice them in half and prepare them how you wish. We like to toast ours and smother them with home made jam! Add some extra nutrients by using a vegetable spread with extra vitamins added and devour them with a lovely cup of herbal tea!

Earl Grey, Apricot and Sultana Scones

1st February 2013 // 2 Comments

Earl Grey cake in Partnership with The Happy Egg Co.

Earl Grey cake in partnership with The Happy Egg Co.

Here it is! This is our début cake, recipe and tutorial in partnership with The Happy Egg Co. In our design and development post we blogged about creating a delicious tea infused cake. We settled upon the delicate taste of Earl Grey tea paired with fragrant scent of lemon and bergamot. After the following images of the finished cake you’ll find the recipe and a tutorial on how to hand paint a rose onto an iced cake. Why not create this cake, or elements of it, yourself?

Earl Grey cake in partnership with The Happy Egg Co.

Recipe

To create this cake (a 9 inch circle) you will need the following…

7-8 free range eggs by The Happy Egg Co. depending on egg size
453g self raising flour
453g caster sugar
543g butter
3-4 Earl Grey teabags
4-6 drops of Bergamot extract

For the buttercream you will need…

453g butter (don’t use margarine as the water content is higher and not suitable for buttercream)
Bergamot extract (flavour to your own taste)
Lemon extract (flavour to your own taste)
453g - 553g icing sugar (choose your own consistency and taste)

The very first step you need to do is to create a pat of Earl Grey tea infused butter. This ensures the tea will become more prominent in flavour once baked. Simply adding Earl Grey leaves to the batter only gives a very faint scent and taste.

‘Brewing’ your tea

Earl Grey cake in partnership with The Happy Egg Co.

To create your Earl Grey butter you need to ‘brew’ the tea leaves and butter together in a saucepan. Once mixed together pour the melted Earl Grey butter into a suitable container and allow to chill and reset in the fridge. Once chilled you can simply add the Earl Grey butter to your recipe as normal.

To create the cake cream your butter in a stand up mixer and then add the caster sugar. Add the flour along with half of happy eggs for approximately one minute. Once half the happy eggs are combined add the remaining and mix for around 5 minutes. Once the batter is fully mixed add a few drops of bergamot to enhance the Earl Grey flavour further.

Pour into greased cake pans (we use Wilton’s Bake Easy Non-Stick Spray to prepare our cake pans) and place on the top shelf of a pre-heated oven at Gas Mark 3/325F/170C. Bake for approximately 30 minutes. Baking time may differ slightly depending on your oven.

Leave to cool and in the meantime prepare your buttercream.

For the buttercream add entire pat of butter diced into cubes to be creamed in a stand up mixer. Then gradually add icing sugar and small cubes of the remaining pat of butter. Once the buttercream is of a smooth consistency add your flavourings and mix well.

How to hand paint a rose onto your cake

Earl Grey cake in partnership with The Happy Egg Co.

We decided to decorate our Earl Grey cake with hand painted roses in order to evoke a lovely traditional, British look. Painting onto an iced cake can be scary, but if you follow our tips and practice on a small rolled out section of icing you should be able to create a beautiful and dramatic design.

What you need…

Good paintbrushes in various sizes (use different sizes for each colour)
Gel and paste colours (don’t use liquid colours as these will be faint)
Lustre dusts (these are wonderful for adding shimmer, texture and a lighter colour)
Vodka (this is used as a ‘thinner’… it evaporates quickly and leaves no alcohol behind so it is safe to use on kids’ cakes)

Earl Grey cake in partnership with The Happy Egg Co.

Step one: Using a brush around 1cm in width and your darkest colour paint a rough circle as the centre of your rose and brush some ‘petals’ around the outside. Make sure you don’t pick up too much liquid on your brush or you’ll find your painting very blotchy. Keep a towel or tissue close by to dry your brush.

Step two: At this stage you need to decide the direction your rose will face. In the images above our rose faces top left. To add direction brush in some tonal colour around the rose concentrating on the lower part of the flower.

Step three: Keep adding colour into your rose with a smaller brush. A tip is to use around four colours in total… the dark for the centre and defined petals combined with a brighter colour to add interest, a pale colour and finally a white or pearlised cream to tone down some sections.

Step four: To add leaves think of how they would flow. Either imagine a simple curved line through your rose or an S shape. Add the leaves and then use tones of green and yellow to add colour.

23rd January 2013 // 2 Comments

The Happy Egg Co. Cake - Time for Tea

Welcome to our first cake design development blog post in partnership with The Happy Egg Co. Our development posts will help take our readers through the cake design, recipe testing and trend forecasting process. We’ll show you what is involved in designing a cake and it’s recipe, how to gather inspiration, creating colour palettes and what fads in the cake world to look out for!

Time for Tea

The Happy Egg Co. Earl Crey Cake 2011 and 2012 saw a trend in the ‘boozy cupcake’, so much so that it became a category in the National Cupcake Week’s list of competitions, but for those who remain tea-total (or those who overindulged in mulled wine at Christmas) a tea infused cake, cookie or cupcake is still a luxurious and tasty treat!

Flavours

The Happy Egg Co. Early Grey Cake To begin our research and development we sat down with a nice cup of tea and a slice of Victoria sponge made with none other than Happy Egg Co. free range eggs in order to think of what flavour we’d like to create a recipe around. Some tantalizing flavours included Empress Grey (lighter and more floral than Earl Grey) with delicate orange blossom; darjeeling with zesty lime; peppermint tea with dark chocolate; Earl Grey with rich bergamot and lemon or blackberry buttercream; or finally chamomile with lavender (perhaps far too floral and ‘spring time’ for January). After some deliberation we settled on a fragrant Earl Grey flavour enhanced with bergamot and zesty lemon or blackberry buttercream! Alongside well sourced free range eggs by The Happy Egg Co. it is equally as important that all extracts are of the highest quality. Uncle Roy’s All Natural Bergamot extract provides the premium flavour required in any cake by Juniper Cakery.

Design ‘boards’

Another important stage of the cake development process involves gathering inspiration and creating quick design boards based on what flavour or season we initially base the cake on. Since we decided upon floral/citrus Earl Grey flavour our visual inspiration involved looking at incorporating fine china prints, begramot botanical prints, classic Wedgwood colours and detailing, traditional layer cakes, lace and doily prints and fresh lemon.

The Happy Egg Co. Earl Grey Cakes

Cake designs & sketches

From our design boards, colour palettes and photographs we get a better idea of what styles we want our cake to incorporate. This leads us to the sketching phase. We quickly draw out a few different cake designs and discuss the pros and cons. Things we need to consider include what The Happy Egg Co. wants and needs, how the cake will travel (including weight, shape, size and fragility), what cake decorating technique we can teach our lovely readers, and if we have translated our chosen flavour and design board images well.

The Happy Egg Co. Earl Grey Cakes

Stay tuned to find out what design we decide to create!