Baking - Tea Loaf

One other interest of mine is to learn more cooking techniques that are period to the 18th century but also the 19th century on up.  I like to cook but have not been able to manage a lot of extra curricular cooking since I moved two years ago.  Now that I am getting more involved in historical type events I am relearning how to cook from period recipes.

Now the one I tried yesterday isn't a period recipe but one that crosses probably eras in some form or fashion.  The Tea Loaf.  Made with actual brewed tea.  I got the recipe from one of my cook books I have collected over the years:  The Book of National Trust Recipes, by Sarah Edington published in 1988.  It is from the treasury of British heritage of cookery.  The recipe comes from  the Attingham Park of Shropshire built by the Lord Berwick in the late 18th century.  Anyway, I am not sure I can post the recipe since it is copy write.  Essentially it is brewed tea in which you soak raisins and dried fruit and sugar (brown) then add that to self rising flour and eggs - bake it and there you are.

The results came out pretty good - a little dry and dense but the flavor is good - I used Tetley's tea.

 I didn't have any raisins so I used cranberries and cut up dried Turkish apricots. 

I love to bake - I tend to have mixed results but I keep trying.  Using European recipes is tricky - making the conversions from metrics to English Standards of measure should hit the mark but I don't find it to be spot on sometime.  Nonetheless, cooking is about experimenting and I never really follow any recipe totally by the line.  I just can't - it is that creative bend in my mental sinews.
Suffice it to say, Bon appetite!