Orange and Pecan Tea Bread

This is inspired by the delicious Orange Flavour Redbush (rooibos) tea that Lidl used to sell but sadly seems to have disappeared. The lovely thing about tea bread is that like a muffin you can enjoy it at any time of the day from breakfast through to supper. It's fairly low in fat and sugar too so it's not such a guilty pleasure!

Orange and Pecan Tea Bread

Ingredients

2 cups of plain flour

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1 teaspoon of baking soda

½ teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

½ cup of caster sugar

¼ cup of sunflower oil

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 teaspoon of orange extract

2 redbush (rooibos) teabags brewed in 1 ¼ cups (250ml or ¼ litre) of freshly boiled water

½ cup of chopped pecans

½ cup of candied peel

2 tablespoons of orange marmalade

Pre-heat the oven to 350C / 180F / Gas 4

Grease and flour a loaf tin

Add the boiling water to the teabags and set to one side to brew.

Sieve the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and caster sugar and mix together.

Add the sunflower oil, vanilla extract, orange extract and tea. The tea bags will have absorbed a bit of the water so top back up to the original ammount. Stir into the dry mixture.

Fold in the chopped pecans, candied peel and marmalade.

Put the mixture into the loaf tin and bake for 50 mins

Cool on a cooling rack before removing from the tin.


Recipe by Caroline Turner