Earl Grey Tea Cake With Dark Chocolate and Orange Zest Recipe (2024)

To PB. Cream doesn’t like to whip. It is inherently lazy. Wants to lay around. Think how you feel after too much cream although getting close to that line is such pure joy. Here’s what you do. Shock the cream into action by super-chilling the bowl and blades. Works every time. Want faster? Pinch of cream of tarter or couple teaspoons plain sugar. Also, tell the cream you love it. It’s a highly emotional ingredient. Good luck.

First try: Cake tastes delicious w/o frosting. However, as an Earl Grey lover, there is ZERO taste of EG's unique flavor in the cake.Second try: For cake, doubled EG dry leaf (2 TBSP) & steeped it in the 1/2 C of milk. I made a buttercream frosting by steeping 1 TBSP of EG loose leaf tea in 4 TBSP cream. Excellent!NOTE: Recipe says nothing about when to mix dry ingredients with flour, & suddenly Step 3 says "beat in the flour mixture..."

Tried making this and the cake came out fantastic, but when I made the frosting the cream refused to whip (it remained completely liquid) even after 30 minutes+ of trying to whip it with a kitchen aid... any ideas what I did wrong? I thought I followed the recipe pretty closely.

This was delicious, with subtle, well-balanced flavor. I followed the directions closely and it turned out beautifully. I read in the notes that the frosting could be problematic, so I made 2 small changes. Some volume was lost to the tea-infused cream due to sieving, so before whipping I added a little more than 1/4 cup cream, enough to total the original 3/4 cup. The other little thing I did was to whip the cream cheese separately before adding it to the whipped cream. It turned out great!

I have a great recipe for Earl Grey "tea" cookies, and love the flavors, so am definitely looking forward to baking this. I wouldn't normally post without trying the recipe first, but the thought of presenting this to my husband as an afternoon treat this weekend, perhaps to accompany an episode or two of the Crown, lifted my spirits :) Will report back!

I have a tea shop and sell lots of tea-baked goods. Both Anita and Maeve are correct...flavoring cream with tea requires a greater amount of tea, a stronger tea, and a longer steep.

I would recommend using a mortar and pestle on the loose tea before putting in the cake. I really liked this cake a lot but had to spend time pulling big pieces of lose tea out of my teeth, which diminished the pleasure of the cake. The orange is excellent, the chocolate optional in my opinion.

There are a few details left out here. Start whipping your heavy cream for a minute or so and then slowly add the sugar. Line just the bottom of the cake pan with a circle of parchment. I’d use a springform pan.

Teabags were what I had, so made this with 3 teabags’ worth of Earl Grey for the cake; 2 for the frosting. Amount of cake batter was just right for a dozen cupcakes, 23 minutes to fully bake.As for the frosting, chilled the infused tea (sans the bags）for 3 hours, whipped with a hand-mixer till just just thickened; added the room temperature cream cheese - mixture came together very quickly; lastly the powdered sugar. Lovely subtle flavors.

The cream was probably too warm. It needs to be very cold, and it helps to also refrigerate the bowl and beaters on a warm day.

I used loose tea from earl grey tea bags, and in the frosting even after sifting using a small holed sifter dots of earl grey tea came out. It looked like an Oreo frosting. Next time I would recommend soaking 3 earl grey tea bags into the heavy cream overnight, then the earl grey tea flavor will be more present and no chunks of tea!

Regarding the frosting, Cooks Illustrated suggests heating 1/4 cup of the cream to 125 degrees. Off heat steep the tea in the cream for 10 minutes. They use 2 T Earl Gray tea. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. Whip the remaining 1/2 cup of cream until it starts to thicken, then add the tea-infused cream and the sugar, and carry on. It's too hot here to try the recipe, no A/C!, but I'm looking forward to it!

Great recipe, but when I made the frosting, the cream, early grey cream, and confectioners sugar curdled and never reached medium stiff peaks. Any ideas why? And how I can avoid the issue in the future? Thanks!

Delicious delicate flavors. Next time I will crush up the loose leaf tea for the cake as some of the larger leaves came through in a few bites. Otherwise, the orange, chocolate and tea really played off one another for a very nice tea cake.

Absolutely delicious. I did not do the frosting, and didn’t miss it for a minute. Great snack to go with coffee (or more tea).

this was amazing!! definitely worth making! my tahini had separated so i microwaved it for ~20s and stirred to recombine, also upped the tahini to 6 tbsp and i could definitely taste it in there. made 8 muffin cups and it took longer than 14 min to bake in my oven (which often needs more time than recipes suggest)— would probably do 16-18 minutes next time. also used finely chopped walnuts at the bottom instead of sesame seeds since i didn’t have sesame seeds and it worked amazing

This is such a lovely cake. I had tea bag bags so I broke them open and used the tea inside. Loved the finely chopped chocolate- I was worried it would overpower the cake but it did not. I loved the subtle earl grey, the orange, and the chocolate as did my family. Will definitely make again.

Made double the recipe and added blackberries in between the two layers. Was amazing!

Doubled tea in frosting and cake— steeped tea for cake in the milk. Liked the frosting much more prior to addition of whipped cream. If I make it again I would reduce or omit the amount of cream cheese and remove chocolate

The orange seems to dominate, would use less, next time.The loose tea in the cake is not a great experience. Would either grind it to a fine powder or just steep it in the milk, next time. Would also increase the amount of tea.I used whipped cream cheese in the frosting (all I had) and it blended effortlessly.

The ingredients call for orange juice but the recipe and the video doesn’t show we put it in. I did a cold brew for the tea for the frosting and then simmered the next day it was amazing. I also cold brewed the milk for the batter with the tea instead of just throwing it with the dry ingredients and it really punched up the tea flavor but it wasn’t overbearing. Tastes amazing!

Have made this twice & the first time forgot to add the milk. Without the milk it had a fudgier, more brownie-like texture, and surprisingly we all preferred it that way!

I have made this twice. Both times I skipped the frosting and just dusted with powdered sugar. I was being lazy for sure, but I really didn't miss it!

I loved the frosting and made sure to add a bit extra earl grey to the cake and topping. However I found my texture of the cake quite dry and dense, rather than fluffy and light—I wonder where I went wrong? It has you add all the dry ingredients at once rather than gradually, I think next time I’d try to add more slowly as one usually does in adding dry to wet for cakes. Would love other tweak ideas!

If your loose leaf earl grey is in larger pieces like mine was, DEFINITELY grind them before putting them in the cake. Alternatively, you could make the infusion in the topping stronger and omit from the cake altogether. You could also steep the tea in the milk that goes in the cake to get that flavor without having the actual tea in the cake. The tea pieces in the cake became super hard after I put the cake leftovers in the fridge.

I made this in a "wet plus dry" method rather than creaming the sugar and butter and it came out nicely, could be done with oil for a Chantilly cake in a pinch. The icing as written was VERY sweet. This recipe seemed like it was supposed to have diplomat creme and it was made easier for NYT or something. I repeated with only a small tsp of sugar and the flavor of the tea was much more noticeable, but if I did it again I would skip the mascarpone and make an earl gray creme anglais to whip in

Made as is, was perfect.

I have made 100s of NYT recipes; the majority excellent. This is the 1st review I’ve ever written. This cake. It is everything. Phenomenal texture, subtle and sophisticated. Many desserts are an overwhelm of sugar, this is just sweet enough with complementary, interesting layers of flavor. Substitutions- had about half the earl grey as written so filled out the recipe with lavender black tea. Clementine peel a suitable replacement for orange in a pinch.

Make Earl grey simple syrup. Mix 1/2 1/2 with whole milk to add to batterFrosting: use simple syrup in place of heavy cream. Make a cream cheese frosting inspired frosting with marscapone, sugar, and the simple syrup

Made this again - this time I used a spice blender to make the tea finer and added way more chocolate. Fantastic! Decided to use regular cream cheese frosting and it works fine.