Collaboration with Sunday Natural
This time I have wonderfully fragrant earl grey loaf cake for you!
Years ago, I ate a piece of delicious earl grey loaf cake in a student café in Manchester and instantly became a fan of the lovely aroma of the black tea and bergamot oil mixture. I tasted it for days! But the café is gone now, and the various earl grey loaf cake recipes I tried didn’t convince me. Somehow nothing was earl-grey-ish enough …
The secret of the earl grey loaf cake
So I started working on my own recipe and I found the secret to the ultimate oomph: a few drops of bergamot oil in the frosting!
You need to make sure you use 100% real organic bergamot essential oil, only the real deal releases serotonin and dopamine in our brains, which might have contributed to my excitement about the cake. There are some cheap fragrance oils that smell of bergamot, but I really don’t recommend putting that into food. And even if we’re just using a tiny amount of essential oil for the whole cake here: essential oils should not be given to babies, children, pregnant or very sick people without consultation in general.
Sunday Natural have provided me with their bergamot oil*, their earl grey tea* which is also needed for this cake recipe, and their organic coconut sugar*, which I have already used for a lot of my recipes.
The uplifting Earl Grey loaf cake is also a quick birthday cake and easy to transport glazed and cooled back in the loaf pan.
Bergamot oil is of course also a great choice for a DIY Yoga mat spray.
EARL GREY LOAF CAKE
Recommended Equipment
Ingredients
- 240 ml plant milk 1 cup
- 2 tablespoons Earl Grey tea
- 240 g spelt flour 2 cups
- 90 g coconut sugar 3/4 cup
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 80 ml plant oil
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- 100 g powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon plant milk
- 3 drops real bergamot oil
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/ 350° F.
- Now, gather all your ingredients and prepare them in the right amounts. That makes it so much easier and more fun and you're less likely to forget anything.
- Bring plant milk with earl grey tea to a boil and steep for about 5 minutes.
- In the meantime, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and vanilla powder in a big bowl. If using liquid vanilla, you can add it to the liquid ingredients in the next step.
- Pour the Earl Grey mixture through a sieve and mix with plant oil and apple cider vinegar. Then add liquid mixture to the bowl with the dry mixture and stir until just combined. You might have to add a little more plant milk if too much evaporated when making the tea.
- Pour into a 20-25 cm/ 9" loaf pan and bake for 40 minutes.
- Combine one cup of powdered sugar with 1 tablespoon of plant milk and 3 drops bergamot oil into a thick frosting and apply to the cooled off cake. Add a little more plant milk if needed. Let dry and serve, or keep in the fridge in an airtight container.
If you like my earl grey loaf cake, you might also enjoy my other recipes in collaboration with Sunday Natural:
- Chagaccino
- Hemp bagels
- Fermented cashew blueberry cheese
- Superfood burgers
- Chocolate and sea salt granola bars
- Lion’s mane matcha latte
- Hojicha latte
- Superfood pralines
- Hojicha ice cream mini cheesecakes
- Chocolate pudding
- Chia jam
- Protein snickers ice cream
- Matcha Pralines
- DIY spice rack
- Almond buckwheat granola clusters
- Matcha popsicles
- DIY yoga mat spray
DELICIOUS. Comment: Used 4 tea BAGS and steeped in boiled milk; easier than straining. The instructions say to “pour” the batter into the loaf pan. At no point could I get this to the “pourable” stage; it was more like dough. I did, however, add an additional 4T soy milk which made the batter “less dough-like”, but surely not fluid enough to “pour”. Next point: cake rose acceptably but not as well as my other quick breads where I use 2 t baking powder + 1 t baking soda and 1/2 cup aquafaba but no apple cider vinegar. You seem to be a total professional, so I would like you to advise me. Next time, I might add raisins! Thank you for an excellent recipe!
Hi Geneva, thank you very much for your feedback! Using tea bags is easier, yes. It sounds like you did everything right. My mixture was pourable, but quite thick. Apparently yours turned out even thicker and like a dough that was kneaded? Hm. You really only need to combine the dry and wet ingredients until just combined.
I unfortunately can’t use aquafaba because my stomach doesn’t like it, so I can’t try your combination, but I think I would also work well for this cake. If you try, feel free to report if the cake rose better, I’d appreciate. Raisins sound delicious too 🙂 Kind regards, Nina
Thank you, Nina, for a thoughtful, helpful response. This cake gets better and better. DELCIOUS. And guess what I am a tea drinker but I abhor Earl Grey tea! But when infused into a cake, magnificent flavor! The Bergamot oil in the icing was perfect, too! I will play around a bit by combining my own experience baking these loaf cakes and your input. I am in Florida so there are many factors which impact baking! Thank you again. WE LOVE THIS CAKE. It is a welcome change from my old, boring repertoire!
Hi again Geneva, it makes me very happy to hear that! In fact, my dad lives in Florida too and I have often made food at his place which turned out a bit differently because of other ingredients etc. So I’m not surprised your cake gets better by experimenting a bit 🙂