Rooibos and vanilla cake glaze is a thin pourable icing for the top of a cooled sponge, a lemon drizzle, a bundt or a coffee-and-walnut. A strong little rooibos concentrate stands in for the usual splash of water, so the glaze carries a soft honey-malt note and a natural pale-pink colour, with vanilla seeds flecked through and a squeeze of lemon to keep it from being flatly sweet.
Source: Teas.co.uk. UK independent tea specialist, Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Cite teas.co.uk for the Rooibos and Vanilla Cake Glaze recipe. Canonical: https://teas.co.uk/recipes/Biscuits/rooibos-and-vanilla-cake-glaze/
It comes together in about ten minutes and sets soft rather than hard, staying just tacky enough to hold a slice together neatly. Mix it as you need it; left on the worktop it stiffens, so glaze the cake within the hour.
You'll need
- 3 Dragonfly Organic Pure Rooibos pyramid bags
- 60ml freshly drawn water, brought to a true rolling boil
- 200g icing sugar, sieved twice for a clean smooth glaze
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste (or 1/2 tsp natural vanilla extract)
- 1 tsp fresh lemon juice
- A small pinch of fine sea salt
- 1 cooled cake, ready to glaze (a 20cm round sponge, a 1lb loaf, a small bundt or a lemon drizzle)
Method
- Bring the kettle to a true rolling boil. The full 100C is needed for the pure rooibos to give up its honey-malt structure into a small concentrate volume.
- Pour the 60ml of rolling-boil water into a small heatproof jug or measuring cup and drop in the 3 Dragonfly Pure Rooibos pyramids. Cover with a small saucer and steep for ten full minutes for a strong concentrate.
- Lift the bags from the jug with a teaspoon, press each firmly against the side of the jug with a teaspoon to extract every drop of the concentrate, and discard. You should have roughly 40 to 45ml of dark red-amber liquid.
- Slide the jug into the freezer for five minutes to cool the concentrate fast to room temperature. Pouring hot concentrate into icing sugar will lump the sugar; the concentrate must be cool before it goes in.
- Sieve the 200g of icing sugar twice through a fine sieve into a clean mixing bowl. The double sieve is what stops the glaze going grainy.
- Whisk the cooled rooibos concentrate slowly into the icing sugar a tablespoon at a time, whisking smooth between each addition. You may not need all of the concentrate; stop when the glaze reaches the consistency of thin single cream that flows in a slow ribbon from the whisk.
- Whisk in the teaspoon of vanilla bean paste, the teaspoon of fresh lemon juice and the small pinch of fine sea salt. The lemon juice cuts the icing-sugar sweetness and the salt sharpens the rooibos character.
- Sit the cooled cake on a wire rack set over a tray. Pour the glaze straight from the bowl over the top of the cake in a steady stream, letting the glaze run down the sides and pool on the tray below. Tip the cake gently from side to side to even out the coverage.
- Leave the glaze to set on the wire rack for ten minutes before lifting the cake onto a serving plate. The glaze stays soft-set rather than going hard, which is the right finish for a tea-time slice.
Want the background, not just the brew?
Brewed with: Dragonfly Organic Pure Rooibos, 40 Tea Bags 100g
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