Baked earl grey doughnuts and more tea, please

This week I’ve been trying to keep tabs on how much tea I drink. I’ve had tea on the brain because I’ve been anticipating the Sydney Tea Festival.

The amount of tea I consume has kind of shocked me. I never thought that my tea drinking was excessive, but it really is! I’ve had to impose a rule on myself – one regular black tea with milk, one herbal tea. And repeat. (And repeat, and repeat…)

I don’t think that tea is doing me any harm, but I do like to think that I’m a woman of moderation. And switching things up like this is making me pay more attention to what I’m ingesting – which can’t be bad!

Does anybody else have a tea addiction? I honestly think I have a slight problem! A delicious, warming problem, but a problem nonetheless.

I found chamomile flowers at the Marrickville Markets last week and they’ve been brightening up my kitchen window. I think I’m officially a tea tragic!!

This recipe is one to add to my catalogue of recipes entitled things that don’t usually have tea in them – you can find more of these recipes by typing “earl grey” into the search box.

Baked doughnuts

• ¾ cup milk
• 1 x 7g active dry yeast sachet
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 20g butter
• 1 egg
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon
• 2 ¾ cups plain flour
• Zest of half an orange

Earl grey glaze

• ¼ cup boiling water
• 4 tsp tea leaves
• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla

Heat your milk until it’s warm to the touch. Add the yeast to the mixture and set to one side for five minutes.

While the yeast does its thing, beat together the sugar and the butter. Switch to a bread hook and add the frothy yeast mixture to the sugar and butter, then mix in the egg, nutmeg and cinnamon. Finally, add in the orange zest, then the  plain flour, one cup at a time.

Continue to mix with the dough hook until your bowl is completely clean. Be patient, it may take a couple of minutes for this to come together. When you have a cohesive ball of dough, give it another minute of kneading. Cover your bowl with a tea towel and set it somewhere warm for 45 minutes to an hour.

Preheat your oven to 190° and grease your doughnut tin.

When your dough is sufficiently risen (the longer you allow it, the more it will rise) grab a pair of scissors and chop your dough into even sizes.  The easiest way to get even doughnuts is to weigh them – my dough weighed about 700g once it was risen so I weighed out 18 pieces of dough which weighed 40g each. Simple! Roll each of your pieces of dough out so that they fit in your doughnut tin (for my love-heart shaped doughnut tin, I needed to roll my dough out to about 20cm.) press the two ends together to neaten them up slightly.

Bake for 9 minutes, then allow them to cool before icing.

To make the icing, boil your water and pop the tea leaves in the mixture. Allow them to brew for 3-5 minutes. Strain the tea leaves out from the liquid and discard them. Add half of the liquid to your icing sugar and then add the vanilla. Continue to add the remainder of the liquid until your icing reaches a thick, but runny consistency. You may not need all of the liquid, so use it sparingly!

Spoon the 1-2 teaspoons of the glaze over the top of the doughnuts and spread it around slightly if it looks like it’s no spreading by itself.

If desired, top your doughnuts with a few tea leaves (don’t go overboard, as they’re not everyone’s taste!) and the remainder of the zest from your orange.

Enjoy the subtle floral sweetness that the earl grey glaze bring to the traditionally flavoured doughnuts. The Boy described the combination as “sort of hot cross bun-ish.” Keep in mind that because these are baked doughnuts and not fried, they’re slightly heavier than a normal doughnut. They’re just as delicious though!!