Earl Grey Teacake

When I was growing up, my public school in San Leandro, California had a monthly Scholastic book club - basically, Scholastic's ingenious method of door-to-door sales aimed at kids. I'd come home with a colorful pamphlet with pictures and summaries of that month's featured books, and beg my mom to let me order a couple. Although my parents loved reading themselves, having discovered the public library system in America, my mom didn't see the point in having to buy books when we could borrow them for free. But she always let me choose one book each month and I still remember how much I looked forward to the days when the books were delivered and our teacher handed them out in the classroom. I loved alphabetizing the books by author on my bookshelf, just like a real library. What a nerd.

These days, I mostly download my books on Kindle/iPad because it's just so convenient to be able to carry a whole library of books with you on one contraption (and because in HK, we just don't have space to store books!), but I still love the tactile feeling of a physical book in my hands. 

A Kindle or iPad is no place for a cookbook though, and I'm glad for it. I love flipping through the heavy pages of a good, thick cookbook, looking at the vibrant photos and earmarking recipes to try at some point. But here's the thing about cookbooks: a lot of times, the recipes are inaccurate. Or perhaps they've never been tested in a real kitchen. All I know is that I've followed recipes to the T and sometimes ended up with a dish that has absolutely no depth of flavor or a stew that is so salty my mouth shrivels. There are three chefs whose books I trust though (and whose writing and recipes I absolutely adore): Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson and Gale Gand.

Everyone knows Jamie Oliver - the host and star of the Naked Chef from days back. What I love about his books are that he doesn't provide any exact recipes. He doesn't tell you to add 1/2 teaspoon of salt or 2 tablespoons of olive oil. He'll usually call for a lug or two of olive oil (exactly how much is a lug?). Or even if he does provide a measurement, he'll add some adjective that makes it not completely measurable: 1 heaped teaspoon of cinnamon, for example. While some people may not like his style because his lack of precise measurements make it hard to follow, I love it, because I think he understands that: 1) not everyone's palates are the same - some people like it saltier, or sweeter, or spicier; and 2) when cooking with fresh ingredients (as he does religiously), it's almost impossible to give exact measurements anyway because 1 medium carrot in your grocery store might not be 1 medium carrot in my grocery store. But if you follow his recipes and fiddle with the seasonings to your liking, you will almost always end up with a fantastic dish. Plus, I just love his British slang: "preheat the oven to full whack," "beat up your eggs," "scrunch and mix well."

I used to think Nigella Lawson was just a pretty face who landed a cooking show, but once I tested out her recipes, I changed my mind. Ok, to be honest, I only tested out ONE recipe of hers, but it was absolutely divine. It's the recipe for homemade danish pastry from her book How to Be a Domestic Goddess and it will ensure that you will never eat a packaged pastry ever again. It's fairly simple to make as long as you have a food processor and a rolling pin, and start the recipe the day before you actually want to eat the danishes. That recipe alone made the $25 price tag on the book worth it - you can fill it with sweetened cream cheese, canned pie filling, or even just nutella or some chopped nuts with brown sugar - it's the pastry itself that will blow you away: sweet, buttery, delicate. 

Finally, Gale Gand. I wish I could meet Gale Gand and kiss her cheeks to thank her for her wonderful recipes. What I love about her is that she has a sweet tooth, but she has a complex, sophisticated sweet tooth. Most people I know who have a sweet tooth just need sugar, and lots of it. It could be in the form of Frosted Flakes or pop tarts or M&Ms or gummy bears or soda - they are not picky about the vehicle, as long as it's packed with sugar (or more likely, high fructose corn syrup). But Gale Gand understands that not all sweet things are the same. There's cake, then there's Gale Gand's cake. I made a grapefruit cake with sweet cream cheese frosting from her book Butter Sugar Flour Eggs and knew that I had found in her a soulmate. Not everyone shared my love for the tart-sweet cake, but I absolutely loved it. Grapefruit! In a cake!

One of my favorite recipes from Gale Gand is for a sour cream cake with poppy and fennel seeds, topped with an Earl Grey tea glaze. Sour cream is magic for cake - it makes the batter incredibly moist and fluffy. The fennel seeds in the cake give it a slightly savory dimension, which I love. 

The following recipe for Earl Grey Teacake, which I used to sell at Love at First Bite (not sure if it's offered on the menu anymore), is adapted from Gale Gand's recipe. You will need an electric mixer for this recipe. All of the ingredients below can be found in Hong Kong at Oliver's in the Prince's Building.

Ingredients

¼ cup poppy seeds (make sure they are fresh - poppy seeds can go rancid fairly quickly)

2 teaspoons fennel seeds

scant ½ cup strong Earl Grey tea (preferably Twinings – 2 bags brewed in 1/2 cup hot water for 10 minutes)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons (approximately 115 grams) unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

2 extra-large eggs

1 ½ teaspoon Madagascar bourbon vanilla extract

1 cup sour cream

Glaze:

¼ cup strong Earl Grey tea

1 ½ cups + 1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar (in HK, you'll find it labeled as icing sugar)

1.  Brew tea, remove teabags. Measure 1/2 cup of the tea and pour over the poppy and fennel seeds in a small bowl.

2.  Heat oven to 350F/180C. Grease and flour the loaf pans.

3.  Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together. Sifting is recommended in this recipe - it will make for a much fluffier cake and ensure that it bakes evenly.

4.  Cream butter with hand mixer or standing mixer. Add sugar and cream until soft and fluffy.
5.  Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each. Add vanilla and mix again until well incorporated. The mixture should look creamy and fluffy.

6.  Add 1/2 the flour mixture and 1/2 the sour cream to the butter mixture, until just incorporated. Add the remaining flour mixture and sour cream and mix, until just incorporated. Add seeds and tea and mix until batter is smooth.

7.  Pour into 2 9-inch loaf pans and bake 35 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean (I always use the toothpick test rather than exact baking times, as ovens can be different - or you could get an oven thermometer).

8.   Mix 1/4 cup cooled strong Earl Grey tea with 1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar and whisk until smooth. 

9.   After taking the cakes out of the oven, pierce the cakes all over with a toothpick and pour half the tea glaze over the tops. The holes will allow the glaze to soak the cake evenly. 

10. Add 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar to the remaining glaze and mix until smooth and thick - this will be used as icing to top the cake. After the cakes have cooled for at least 30 minutes, take them out of the pans and put on a plate. Take the icing and drizzle over the cake. 

 The batter should look like this when it's done mixing.

 Drizzle the tea glaze over the top of the cooled cake.

 Ready to serve.

I like this cake best with a cup of strong milky unsweetened coffee or tea.

Pumpkin chocolate bread (and the story of love at first bite)

Back in 2005, when I was sort of a young hippie dreamer (well, let's be honest here - as young hippie a dreamer as a junior corporate lawyer can be), I came across an empty store for lease in Berkeley while I was grabbing coffee at the original Peet's Coffee on the corner of Vine and Walnut Streets. It was inside a sunny little square that included Peet's, a charming lettepress/stationery shop called Twig and Fig and a greasy spoon diner. And I thought: "this would be the perfect place for a cupcake bakery."

I'd been baking since I was a kid, and had spent an inordinate number of hours in law school baking and developing recipes. Cupcakes were all the rage in New York, but other than a cupcake delivery service in Silicon Valley/Peninsula (Sibby's), at the time, cupcakes hadn't really hit the San Francisco bay area yet. And my 25 year old self thought: "you know what, I think I am going to open a cupcake bakery in the Bay Area." And so that's just what I did. When you're 25, everything seems possible, and so, everything is possible.

Never mind that I'd never started a business, nor had any formal culinary or pastry training. Also, never mind that the store for lease was just a shell - no kitchen, not enough electrical wiring or plumbing, nothing. Within two months, I had contacted the landlord and negotiated a lease with a build-out period; hired contractors, carpenters, electricians to build out the space into a functioning bakery; and spent my entire meager life savings and maxed out two credit cards buying bakery equipment. I spent the next 3 months begging and pleading with the City of Berkeley zoning and permit departments to approve the space to be zoned as a bakery/food retail space and issue timely permits to allow the renovations/plumbing/rewirings (for a city that is supposed to be all about freedom and rights and the fight against the system, Berkeley has some of the most bureaucratic red tape in the country). I was still working full-time as a junior associate at a law firm as well, then going home and testing/adapting recipes at night to be sold in mass quantities.

After a couple delays, the doors to love at first bite cupcakery opened at the end of May 2005. It is to this day, my proudest accomplishment - the result of blood, sweat, tears, life savings, credit card debt, the love and support of family, friends and community, and many, many pounds of butter, sugar and flour.

I no longer own the bakery (that's a story for another day), and after I sold the bakery, I wasn't able to bake for years and years. I don't know if it's because I breathed in so much butter and sugar during my bakery days that afterward the scent of cakes baking made me nauseated, or whether it's because deep-down, selling the bakery felt a little bit like giving my baby away and I just wasn't able to face another mixing bowl again.

When I first started dating my now-husband, it had already been years since I sold the bakery and my fire-engine red Kitchenaid mixer had been gathering dust on my kitchen counter. He knew I had started a bakery previously, but because I never baked anything for him, I don't think he believed I actually knew how to bake. So one evening, I decided to bake him red velvet cupcakes, one of the bakery's best-sellers. I creamed the butter and sugar and bright red food dye. Mixed the dry ingredients together. Did that magical little step of adding vinegar to baking soda. Folded in all the ingredients, filled the cupcake pans and stuck them in the oven.

When the cakes came out of the oven, they hadn't risen properly. Instead of fluffy, moist cakes like the ones I used to make at love at first bite, these cakes were dense and heavy. It was a complete and utter fail. I don't know if it's because some of the ingredients had been sitting in my pantry too long, or whether it's because the cake batter just knew my heart still wasn't into baking again. But that miserable fail scared me away from baking again for years and years.

But it's October in Hong Kong, the weather has cooled considerably and the international grocery store aisles remind me that Thanksgiving is just around the corner (every store has piles and piles of Libby's canned pumpkin for sale and notices that turkeys can be pre-ordered already). It also happened to be a good friend's birthday this past Friday, and I suddenly felt inspired to bake again. And I knew just what I wanted to make: pumpkin bread.

To me, pumpkin bread tastes like Thanksgiving with its pumpkin pie spices. It's homey and soothing and very American. And even though I love living in Hong Kong, sometimes I just need a piece of America here.

I personally prefer it in loaf or muffin form, but if you've ever been to love at first bite and had the pumpkin cupcake with cream cheese frosting, this is the same recipe (just omit the chocolate chips and top with cream cheese frosting).

Pumpkin chocolate loaf

The pumpkin makes this bread extremely moist, and the combination of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves makes the kitchen smell like pumpkin pie.

Ingredients/Sources in HK

3 cups all-purpose flour - you can find Gold Medal flour at Oliver's in the Prince's building

1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice  - recipe follows. You will need cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves

2 teaspoons baking soda  - I like Arm & Hammer, which you can find in almost any grocery store here

1 1/2 teaspoons table salt  - make sure you use table salt, not fancy or flaky salt

3 cups granulated sugar

15-ounce can of Libby's pure pumpkin - not the canned pumpkin pie mix, but pure pumpkin. It's available now at 360, Oliver's, CitySuper

4 large organic eggs

1 cup vegetable oil  - you want to use corn, canola or vegetable oil for this, not olive oil, which has a strong scent of its own and will change the flavor of the cake

2/3 cup fresh squeezed orange juice  - one orange should yield about 2/3 cup. Find the sweetest oranges you can find

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips  - I like Hershey's or Ghirardelli, you can usually find these at CitySuper or Oliver's

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350 F/180 C. Line muffin pans with paper liners (will make about 22-24 regular sized muffins/cupcakes) or grease and flour loaf pans (about 3 small loaves, or 2 large loaves).

Combine the flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda and salt in a mixing bowl. Mix the ingredients together.

Whisk the sugar, pumpkin, eggs, oil and orange juice in a separate bowl and beat until smooth. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and whisk until the dry ingredients are just incorporated into the wet ingredients, but do not overmix. Fold in the chocolate chips. Fill muffin or loaf pans about 3/4 full. Do not overfill, or the batter might overflow while baking.

For cupcakes, bake about 20-25 minutes; for loaves, bake 60-65 minutes. A wooden toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean. Let cool for 15 minutes before serving. 

Pumpkin pie spice

Some recipes call for allspice, but I like this version which omits it.

Mix 4 teaspoons cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ground ginger, 1 teaspoon nutmeg and 1/2 teaspoon cloves. This will be more than you need for one batch recipe of the pumpkin chocolate bread, so store the rest in an airtight container.