honey tea loaf & foodie pen pals

This month I participated again in the UK (and now European!) Foodie Penpals scheme organised by Carol Anne. Every month, we get paired with another blogger and have to put together a fun box of foodie treats for them.  This month. I sent my parcel to Sarah.  Sadly I didn't have time to bake anything but I filled it with some of my favourite goodies so I hope she liked it!

Although last month's parcel sadly got lost in the post, this month I received an awesome parcel from Julia that more than made up for it!

Julia's blog, Something Missing, is about baking without apparently vital ingredients and so she sent me some gluten free earl grey biscuits.  They went down very well in our household - the earl grey flavour wasn't too overpowering and the texture of the cookies was just perfect. There was a bit of a tea-theme to my parcel as Julia also included a little box of what is, co-incidentally, our favourite brand of tea!

There were plenty of other goodies in my parcel too including, amongst other things, some Easter chocolate and Easter cupcake cases, some chive seeds (what a good idea!), some Chinese stock cubes and some proper Irish shamrock rock!

I was inspired by all the tea in my parcel to make this honey tea loaf from Waitrose that I've had my eye on for a while.

This recipe is remarkably simple - just soak some raisins in a cup of strong tea, sweetened with a touch of honey, for a couple of hours, mix in two eggs, some flour and some spices and bake. 

Apart from the honey, there is no sugar in this recipe and not really any fat either. I used a mixture of plain and whole wheat flour but you could easily use just whole wheat flour if you really wanted to. 

The resulting bread isn't too sweet but is perfect with a smear of butter and, if you are so inclined, a touch of jam. The tea flavour is quite subtle, just the background really to the juicy raisins and lively spices. I can't wait to see what next month's parcel brings!

  

~

Honey tea loaf

Adapted from a Waitrose recipe

Ingredients

• 225g (3 cups) packed raisins
• 300ml (1 1/4 cups) strong tea
• 75g (4 tablespoons) honey
• 2 medium eggs
• 100g (1 cup) whole wheat flour
• 175g (1 1/2 cups) plain/all purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon baking powder

Cooking Directions

1. Place the raisins in a large bowl. Brew a strong cup of tea and stir in the honey. Pour the tea over the raisins and leave to stand for at least two hours.
2. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F and grease a small loaf tin.
3. Lightly beat the eggs and add them to the raisin mixture.
4. Fold through all the dry ingredients and pour into the loaf tin.
5. Bake for 1 hour - 1 1/4 hours until the cake is firm to the touch and a skewer comes out clean. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.