Tea Cake, Grab A Bite With Your Coffee or Tea

Basic Butter Vanilla Teacake, Image by Author

I believe Teacakes is basically a British invented tradition, something to bite when drinks the afternoon tea.

Interestingly as the name implies, it is not really a cake in every country; it has different definitions.

In England, teacakes are light, sweet, yeast-based bun containing dried fruits.

In Scotland teacake is a chocolate-coated marshmallow with a round biscuit base.

In Sweden and Finland, a teacake is sweetened wheat yeast bread.

In the United States, tea cake is a traditional dense large cookie.

In Australia and India, a teacake is typically a butter cake sprinkled with Cinnamon but optional for Indian recipe.

Since both of us are working from home, we deliberately created this 15-minute break around 3 pm. Either my husband or I will get up from our working chair to prepare coffee and coffee snacks, or you may call tea snacks.

Around lunchtime, I realized that there is no pastry at home and our snack bar is kind of running out of products, and I thought to make a quick butter cake, which will be our tea cake or coffee cake.

I quickly put this together while I was waiting for him to finish his meetings.

The snack bar is something I invented since we started our work from home culture, and it reminds me of my office pantry. Nicely well-arranged multiple products in a few rows with the choice of coffee or tea.

So back to tea cake, it’s not so complicated easy and simple to put together, and I closely followed vanilla cupcake recipe ingredients.

Ingredients

Softened Unsalted Butter: 1/4 Cup Sugar: 3/4 cup ( Mix of white and Brown sugar, avoid brown sugar if you like to have white tea cake) Buttermilk or full cream milk: 1/2 Cup All-purpose flour: 1 Cup — 2 Tablespoon ( or Cake flour: 1 Cup) Corn flour: 2 Tablespoon (only if using All-purpose flour) Baking Powder: 1/2 teaspoon (only if using All-purpose flour) Vanilla Essence: 1 and 1/2 teaspoon Salt: 1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda: 1/2 teaspoon Large Egg in room temperature: 1 Vinegar: 1 teaspoon ( I used Apple Cider Vinegar) oil: 1 and 1/2 Tablespoon

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to190°C (374°F); mine only takes about 5 minutes, so arrange yours accordingly.
2. In a bowl, beat butter and sugar until fluffy and smooth.
3. Add egg and vanilla essence, beat few minutes until they are mixed well.
4. Add sifted All-purpose flour, corn flour, baking powder, baking soda, or cake flour together with salt. Gently beat the mix at a low speed until they are crumbs.
5. Add buttermilk and vinegar, again beat at a low speed for about a minute.
6. Add oil and Gently fold the mixture using a spatula. At this stage, the batter will be thick should not be running consistently but silky smooth.
7. Grease a square or round pan; I used a 9inch round cake pan. Pour the cake batter into the tin and make sure to drop the tin on the kitchen counter a couple of times to force the air in the mixture to come to the surface.
8. Immediately pop in the cake pan or tin into the preheated oven and bake it for around 25 minutes until the tops are brown and the toothpick should come out clean.
9. Transfer the cake pan to a wire rack, let it cool down completely. Release the cake edges using a knife. Cut them into your desired shapes.
10. Enjoy your butter teacake with a cup of coffee or tea 😊.

Notes

• Store leftover teacake at room temperature in an airtight container for 2–3 days.

Originally published in Medium