Any Excuse for Cake

I'm not what you'd call keen on the Royals but the Nuptials are as good a reason as any to make Donna Hay's Earl Grey Tea Cake.

• I cup chopped fresh dates
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 3/4 cup brewed earl grey tea
• 2 apples, peeled and grated
• 1 1/4 cups self-raising flour, sifted
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 150 g butter, melted
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 eggs

1. 1 Preheat oven to 160°C.
2. 2 Place the dates, bicarbonate of soda and tea in a bowl and set aside for 10 minutes.
3. 3 Using a hand-held blender, blend the date mixture until smooth. Set aside.
4. 4 Place the apple, flour and sugar in a bowl and mix to combine.
5. 5 Add the butter, vanilla, eggs and date mixture and mix well to combine.
6. 6 Spoon into a lightly-greased 2.5 litre capacity (10 cup) loaf tin and bake for 45 -55 minutes, or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

     7 Allow to cool in tin for 10 minutes before turning out on to a wire tack to cool completely.

I suppose you could serve this with a cup of Earl Grey, but really, I'd much rather you balanced this out with something more aligned with the workers, like a nice pot of Yorkshire tea. 

If you'd like to play an amusing game whilst waiting for the loaf to cook, you could create your Royal name. Mine is the rather august sounding Lady Mary Patch-Magowar.


Take a grandparent's first name, add the name of your first pet double barreled with the name of the street you grew up on. Plonk a Lord or Lady in front of it.

And I'm not sure why the ingredients are linked. In case you've never come across butter before, I suppose. Or eggs. I'm on a strict timer system these days so I don't have time to do anything about it.

Also, if anyone thinks we live in a rarefied atmosphere of literature and tea cake, consider this: my daughter just said "Dictionaries suck."