Baking with Teatulia tea/coconut and lemon drizzle loaf cake

Tea. It’s such an everyday part of our lives. How many times a day do you hear the words “I’ll put the kettle on” or “fancy a cuppa?”
It’s not just about Tetley these days. There must be literally thousands of different flavours these days (how do they keep dreaming up new ones?)
And tea isn’t just for drinking.
Using tea in baking is a great way of infusing flavour in your bakes. The best way of extracting the flavour for baking is to steep the teabags in melted butter or milk.

Teatulia recently sent me some samples of their organic teas to try – I was more than tempted to drink it all but I decided to save the lemongrass tea to make a zesty lemon and coconut cake.
Coconut and lemon loaf cake
100g coconut
5 tbsp milk
200g butter, melted
3 lemongrass teabags
Zest of one lemon
180g caster sugar
4 eggs
275g self raising flour
Preheat the oven to 180c. Grease and line a 900g loaf tin.
Pour the milk over the coconut, stir and set aside.
Melt the butter in a small pan with the tea bags. When the butter has melted, simmer for a couple of minutes, then take off the heat and leave the teabags to steep in the butter for 15 minutes or so. Carefully squeeze the teabags to release their liquid.
Using your fingertips, rub together the sugar and lemon zest until the sugar is damp and fragrant. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the coconut and milk mixture and melted butter. Sift over the flour and fold in gently.
Pour into your prepared loaf tin and bake for 50-60 minutes or until well risen and golden.

For the drizzle:
100g icing sugar
Juice of one large lemon
In a small pan over a low heat, dissolve the icing sugar and lemon juice. Simmer for a couple of minutes until syrupy, then remove from the heat and set aside.
As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, pierce all over with a skewer. Slowly pour over the syrup, letting it soak in.
For the lemony icing, mix together 100g icing sugar and around half the juice of one lemon. Once the cake is completely cold, pour the icing over the cake and finish with toasted coconut flakes and crystallised lemon.

The Teatulia teas were delicious and so fresh tasting – I especially enjoyed the black tea. Visit www.teatulia.co.uk to read what they are all about and where you can find their tea.