New Cake Recipe: Earl Grey Tea Cake

UPDATE: The full recipe for my Earl Grey Tea cake is now available in my eBook, Cakes without Borders. Order a copy today! A portion of the proceeds from each book is donated to a world children’s humanitarian organization.

I know I’ve been making Earl Grey Tea cake for a long time so many of you may be asking “how is this a new recipe?”. Well I’ve been working on putting my book proposal together and in the process I’ve been revisiting all of my recipes, new and old to really test them out. I’ve also been taking pictures of the finished cakes (as seen above) and writing up a little back story as to what inspired me to create the recipe in the first place. All of which I’ll be including in the proposal. This is the story of the Earl Grey Tea Cake….

Ok it’s confession time….when I was growing up one of my favorite shows was Star Trek: The Next Generation. In case you are wondering, yes I’m a big nerd and proud of it!

Anyone who watched the show on a regular basis knows that Captain Jean-Luc Picard loved Earl Grey Tea. When I first started watching the show I didn’t really drink tea or coffee, but once I grew into a tea drinker I just had to try Earl Grey. To this day it is one of my favorite kinds of tea. Some friends of mine even bought me this awesome Star Trek replicator mug for my birthday!

It’s no surprise then that I decided to make an Earl Grey Tea cake, but before I did I wanted to know a little more about its history and to see what it was really made of.

Earl Grey tea is named after Charles Earl Grey who was the British Prime Minister in the 1830s. The true origins of its invention are unclear, but one legend goes that the Earl’s men saved a young Chinese boy from drowning and that the grateful father presented the famous tea blend as an expression of his gratitude. Earl Grey tea is traditionally a black tea that is flavored with bergamot oil.  Bergamot, a citrus fruit typical of Southeast Asia, is also grown commercially in Italy. To replicate one of the world’s most famous teas, I infused cake with a good British black tea blend and then flavored it with Pure Bergamot Extract. It is topped off with my classic buttercream that has also been infused with black tea.

One bite of this cake and you will boldly go where no (wo)man has gone before!