Chai Spice Cake

I'm a bit of a, erm, bibliophile. Just how huge of a geek am I ? One of my favourite things to do is to scrutinise a cookbook's bibliography (and it's shocking how many don't have one). I find it's very often, especially in the case of a book or author you trust, an excellent source for "leads" - smart potential cookbook buys. Like I said, geeky.

Thusly, I came across Marcy Goldman & Yvan Huneault's The Best of betterbaking.com via Nigella Lawson's Feast a few years ago. I was already a fan of Ms Goldman's A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking (Looking for the ultimate in rugelach recipes? You'll find it here...), so it really didn't take much to convince me I needed the compendium culling from that very special online resource, www.betterbaking.com - a remarkable collection of fail-safe, delicious recipes liberally peppered with the author's educational and entertainingly opinionated insights.

I finally made the Chai Spice Cake from the book, a recipe I had flagged some time ago for it sounded utterly delectable, using as it does brewed chai tea and headily scented with warm spices - good spice cake recipes are hard to come by, and this one promised to be both moist and moreish. Like all the very best sort of recipes, it's a template that invites tinkering - as the recipe suggests, in place of the chai tea, you could use a favourite spiced orange-flavoured tea blend. In addition to tea, you could heighten the zesty dimension with a few drops of Boyajian orange oil, which can be ordered from here (another site I can spend hours trawling). For an extra gingery kick, the tea could be steeped in hot gingerale.

The fabulous tea that occasioned the recipe was Gryphon Tea Company's Straits Chai , silken sachets of a delicately balanced blend of Sumatran black tea and spices. If the packaging looks familiar, it's because you saw the gorgeous picture that accompanied this post. Chubby Hubby and his lovely wife S had passed me the tea to try; suffice to say I am hooked.

I'm a big believer in grinding whole spices as needed in small quantities, especially if used as a flavour accent in baking - it makes all the difference between insipid and inspiring. Grinding serves to release the volatile oils of a spice, all of which are extremely sensitive to light, heat and moisture, thus explaining the often pallid bottled dust that passes off as ground spice - it's had ample time to sit around and deterioriate. This pulverization is easily done in an electric spice/coffee mill or mortar and pestle kept specifically for the purpose, although some larger spices (such as dried ginger or whole nutmeg) are best dealt with by grating with an implement such as a Microplane.

The original recipe calls for ground cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, allspice and mace; I added some ground cardamon seeds to echo the flavour of the tea. When it comes to cardamon, it's best to buy as whole, plump green pods - the white ones have been bleached of colour at the expense of flavour. Also, ready ground cardamon typically includes the hulls, a cost and labour saving measure if ever there was one. The inconvenience of podding then grinding as needed is a small price to pay for the smokily exotic flavour of pure, unadulterated cardamon - distinctive yet mellow, citrusy yet floral, with an effusive camphor-like inflection. Used judiciously - a little goes a very long way - it lends nuanced, bittersweet depth to all manner of spiced cakes, pastries and breads (those of Scandinavia come particularly to mind).

The weather recently has been downright depressing, oppressively muggy on a good day, thunderstorming otherwise. If nothing else, it's conducive for staying in and checking out a new recipe or two. Both in the making and the eating, the Chai Spice Cake provided exactly the sort of comfort I find myself craving. And in the baking, the perfumed plumes that waft and linger are so exquisite as to rival that of the most precious incense.

I couldn't resist busting out a recent addition to my burgeoning cake pan collection and adapting the baking times for the recipe accordingly. It's a baby-Bundt number from Nordic Ware, the folks behind the original Bundt pan. The Garland Pan features 2 one-cup versions respectively of the signature Fleur de Lis, Bavaria and Cathedral shapes - brilliant for creating miniature tea cakes that are beautiful to look at even when unadorned. The cast aluminum bakeware possesses a heft and solid feel that make it a thing of substance in every regard - the material and heat reflective exterior promote even baking and uniform browning, producing cakes with finely hewn detailing, while the nonstick interior ensures easy release. Excuse me if I sound like a total groupie here - I've lost count of the number of times I've ruined an otherwise perfectly mixed cake batter by using a cheap flimsy pan, which I've consequently sworn off. Sure, it's a quantity-quality trade-off, but just as once you've experienced that very first pair of life-changing Jimmys or Louboutins, there really is no recourse but to kick that hitherto cheap-and-cheerful habit.