'Té, Earl Grey, Caliente' Torta

'Tea, Earl Grey, Hot' Cake.
It was Mrs. Fox's birthday the other week, I made cake but forgot to take ANY photos...so these are pilfered from FB...

The idea stemmed from wanting to make a Star Trek themed cake (both geeky fans), I genuinely considered crafting the Starship Enterprise out of cake, but just didn't have the time, so settled for Captain Picard's favourite drink, 'Tea, Earl Grey, Hot', in cake form!

Recipe tweaked from here: http://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/earl-grey-lemon-loaf-cake-recipe (thanks!).

Putting the candles in was the easy bit, lighting them was a slight fire hazard, but hilarious.

The stuff:

• 125ml leche/milk
• 4 bolsita de té Earl Grey/Earl Grey tea bags
• 115g manteqilla sin sal, blanda/unsalted butter, soft
• 225g azúcar granulado/granulated sugar
• 2 huevos/eggs
• 250g harina con levadura/self-raising flour
• 1/2 lemon, juice and zest of
• 200g of icing sugar
• decoración/decoration

The how:

1. Heat the milk, but watch it, it'll heat quick and boil over if you don't! Once off the heat bung in the tea bags and leave for 40 mins to cool.

Once cool crack on with the rest:

1. If you're an organised type, pre-heat the oven and line your tin (I went with a loafer, rather than the minis from the original recipe).
2. Smush the already soft butter (or if not soft ding-box it for like 10 seconds) with the sugar, I didn't have a whizzer, whisky thing, so went manual labour about it and wooden spooned it until pretty mixed.
3. Add eggs and half the flour, more mixing (it was like an arm workout, so, to ensure even muscle tone swap arms every now and again)
4. Add rest of the flour and cooled milk, mixy mixy mix.
5. Plonk in tin/tray/cooking receptacle, Cook. 180 degrees for about 25 mins or until no longer like molten liquid and a bit brown.
6. The cake will need to be cooled before the icing is put on, so don't, like me make the icing and then wait for about 45 mins. The icing is easy, squeeze the lemon into a bowl and slowly add the icing sugar, mixing as you go, try not to chuck too much in at once as it'll look like an sugary atom bomb and decorate your surface with a super fine sugary dust. Mix until thick but runny enough to dribble down the sides of the cake...mmmmmm. Apply to cake, decorate with shiney things if your friend is particularly partial.
7. Give it some time to set (as you'll get that lush crisp when you cut into it), tin foil it and take it to your friend's house in a rucksack via bicycle, hope it doesn't slide off the chopping board en route and present, re-telling the story of why you made this cake.
8. Restrainedly eat dinner and wait for dessert time, decide that you should put the exact quantity of candles in the cake, that isn't normally necessary for an adult, but hey, when you've got them...
9. Light candles, don't burn the house down,
10. Birthday girl blows candle out, don't set the smoke alarm off.
11. Eat cake!

Mrs. Fox valiantly blew them all out in ONE, massive blow!

The cake was lush and almost entirely devoured! I would definitely make it again, trying to make it a little less brown, first time in a new oven, to be expected really.

Happy Birthday Mrs. Fox!

Photos funked up with: http://photobanda.com/photofilters.php using settings: Greg/Rainbow/Round