Three Tries with Tea

the tea sables

For this 17th IMBB A La Cuisine announced the theme tasteTea for July. I'm very interested in the round up. I made the exprience that tea is used in many extraordinary recipes for example as matcha tea in Tea-ramisu (recipe from Santos) ;) or earl grey sauce etc. Using tea in cakes isn't strange for turkish bakery . But using the whole dry tea leaves! I saw this idea on last Tuesday in Lausanne for the first time. Today I tried to bake the Sables with tea which I saw in this cute tea-shop:

I used green tea with vanilla aroma and hibiscus tea. I wanted two sort of sables; one in light green and another one in light rose. But for the one with hibiscus I should not have used the brewed hibiscus tea. It would have been enough, even better, if I had used only the leaves. Both of them were tasty but cannot compete with the ones from the tea-shop.
In the internet I found many sable recipes but none of them seemed to me the right one, so I mixed the recipes. Now I have only one recipe for good cookies to nibble on with a nice cup of tea, but not the recipe for the tea-sable in Lausanne;) These are from Lausanne, enjoyed during sunset:

Here is the recipe:

the tea sables
nearly 2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1 whole egg
1 cup butter, in room temperature
2 tablespoons brewed green tea
1 1/2 teaspoon tea (I will use next time more green tea)
some salt

Mix (with your fingers) all ingredients until it holds together. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out. Cut out the cookies in any shape. Baking time depends on their size and thickness, and also on how white/golden/brown you like them. I needed 10 minutes at 190°C (375°F?)

the aprico-green tea cake:

This cake was very delicious and appetizing. I baked it today as well. Since I didn't have so much time today (I'm going on holiday tomorrow for a few days so I had to do many prepations!) I baked this cake in the microwave!!! It was my second try. I learnt this method of baking cake in the last weeks. Many friends are fascinated from this method because it is rather quick. My first expreience with microwave was a zucchini and chocolate cake. It was very delicious although I said I will prefer the usual method with the oven. This time, however, it did not work very well like before. The other half of the cake -you don't see it- was till in the cake pan. I used for the ingredients below, two small glas pans; gugelhupf (kugelhopf) .
1 cup flour mixed with
1 1/2 baking powder
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil or room temperatured butter
1/4 cup brewed green tea
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 table spoons dry green tea ( I used the one which is my favorite: green tea with sunflower, cornflower and rose petals)
4 big ripe apricots, cut in one-inch chunks

Mix sugar and butter until the mixture gets fluffy. Add the eggs and mix. Add the other things except apricots and mix again. Add the apricot chunks, mix again.
Pour the cake batter in the cake pan. I baked it 7 minutes in the microwave. Let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out on a rack to let it cool completely. It's even better the next day but we tasted it today and it was very tasty.

NOT: Sevgili arkadaslar uzatilmis bir haftasonu tatiline gidiyoruz. Bu tarifleri pazara kadar yayinlamak zorunda oldugum icin böyle acele ingilizce yayinladim. Haftaya türkcelerini yayinlayacagim. Herkese güzel bir haftasonu diliyorum!!!