October 08, 2022

Tea & Cake

I had read in the reviews of Aunt Verna’s Orange Cake that it was dry and not very good, so I figured I’d pair it with a Perfect Cup of Tea to provide a little bit of extra moisture and flavor.

I started out by making the orange cake batter and pouring it into a greased loaf pan:

I cooked that for 30 minutes at 350, and a skewer came out clean. So I let it cool and then when I went to dump it onto a cutting board, a bunch of uncooked batter spilled out of the cake and the whole thing basically fell apart into a huge half cooked lump. I wish I had taken a picture of that, but I didn’t, and instead regrouped a bit.

For my second attempt, I made half as much batter and poured that into a 6-cup muffin tin:

I popped this in at 350 and checked it after 25 minutes. This time I didn’t trust the skewer and cut into a muffin instead. Indeed they were done.

To pair with the orange cake muffins, I made a batch of English Black Tea.

When all was done, I sat down to a snack that could only be described as fairly OK. The cake is not great, just like the comments say. And as a coffee drinker, the tea was pretty much what I’d expect.

Perfect Cup of Tea

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 4/5
• Used black tea, full boil, steeped for about 4.5 minutes

Aunt Verna's Orange Cake

• Crowd: 2/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Added a tiny pinch of salt
• 6 muffins (half the recipe) took about 25 minutes at 350