Before beginning I brewed up a little Earl Grey tea to get in the mood and sipped it in my favourite mug!

The recipe: http://thecakeblog.com/2015/04/raspberry-earl-grey-cake.html. 

This recipe is amazing!! And pretty foolproof…let’s just say if you forget to add the sugar and have to mix it in at the end it doesn’t ruin your cake.

Last Friday the women of my family celebrated my cousins impending nuptials. Everyone was to bring a homemade dish with recipe, and all the recipes were placed in a cookbook for the bride.

What a perfect opportunity to try a new recipe right?! Well, that wasn’t quite the idea but I did it anyway – I did contribute a few of my personal favourite recipes to the cookbook.

But enough of that – onto the recipe! Like I said it is amazing! I would eat the cake plain, fresh out of the oven any day, But I mean I wouldn’t say no to the icing, which by the way was the first time I have ever made authentic buttercream icing, and it is safe to say that it has ruined all other icings for me!

This almost turned into a recipe needing wine, luckily I taste tested the batter and realized I was missing the most important ingredient in a dessert…. sugar!

There were a few things I altered when making this recipe – not all on purpose.

• Forgot to add the sugar, added it in last
• Did not have cheesecloth or a strainer small enough to strain the tea leaves from the syrup – so they stayed.
• Local supermarket did not have vanilla bean – and so neither did my cake.

Things I would change next time

• I would not use raspberry jam in the middle – the flavour overpowered the earl grey flavour in my opinion. Possibly a raspberry buttercream in the center, or vanilla pudding.

The lack of vanilla did work out – I just added a little of vanilla extract and since I couldn’t strain the tea leaves from the syrup when I added it into the icing the tea leaves added the look I wouldn't have gotten if I’d added vanilla bean. So really it all worked out perfectly!

In order to make stacking easier I carefully shave off the rounded tops of the cake – and eat it!

The finished product:

The tag read “eat me” on one side and “keep me” on the other – in addition to the recipe book, the bride took home all the serving dishes the recipes were served on.

Try it for yourself and let us know what you think!
-Trina