Black tea cake

Source:
From Pastry Affair, with icing recipe slightly modified.

Ingredients:

1 cup milk 3 tbsp black tea (~3 bags*) 1/4 cup butter 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 1/4 vegetable oil 1 tsp vanilla extract

1 3/4 cup cake flour** 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt Icing (optional) 1/2 cup butter 1 tbsp honey 2 cups powdered sugar pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Oil a 9" cake pan (I don't have one of these, so I usually double the recipe or my cakes would be really flat!).
2. Heat the milk to a simmer on the stove (or in microwave). Cut open tea bags and add directly to milk. Let cool.
3. Whisk together the dry ingredients.
4. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl. Add eggs one at a time, and beat in the vegetable oil and vanilla extract.
5. Mix in the dry ingredients (cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt).
6. Add the steeped milk and tea leaves, mixing until batter is smooth.
7. Pour batter into pan and bake for 30-40 minutes until a toothpick or fork inserted removes cleanly.
8. Let cool before icing.
9. If making icing, beat butter and honey together before adding powdered sugar and salt. Beat until smooth, and adjust consistency and sweetness to taste. Ice the cake, dipping your knife or spatula in water periodically to keep a smooth surface

COMMENTS:
*I've only ever made this with tea bags (Twinings Irish Breakfast, for the record), and it's been delicious even though I suspect each tea bag only holds 1 tsp (unlike the 1 tbsp called for). I would save my good loose leaf tea for drinking; since the leaves tend to be larger, I think they would be more noticeable in the cake texture.

**2 cups of cake flour can be easily made by whisking together 1/4 cup of cornstarch with 1 3/4 all-purpose flour. It makes the texture lighter, and the small amount of extra can be used elsewhere fairly easily (like pancakes). More information here.

This cake has been pretty popular whenever I've served it - I think it's a more unusual flavour than  chocolate, vanilla, or fruit so it surprises people, but is not too "out there" either. I think it would be really delicious with chai...still need to try that one day!