Help with recipe

[kimbob]

Hi, everyone. Not going to the nursing home today so decided to play with the busy bee bitelet pan. I bought it on a whim when it was on sale at kaf. Followed the recipe on the nordicware label. Pretty awful. The bitelets came out of the pan fine and are very cute but are somewhat tasteless and dense/gummy inside which I attribute to no baking powder or soda in the recipe. The idea is that they don't rise and get a hump on the back, I guess. So, my question is how much baking powder to add to make them lighter. I was thinking of paring down my buttermilk bundt cake recipe. The bitelet recipe is called honey chamomile bee cakelets.

3/4 cup water
3 chamomile or jasmine tea bags
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
6 tbsp honey
1/4 tsp vanilla
1 large egg
1 large egg yolks
1 3/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt

And there is s simple honey syrup to brush on top. Um, made them worse! Too sticky.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

Kim

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[Mike Nolan]

I'm not fond of chamomile and in general I think tea makes for bland baked goods. The subtleties of tea tend to get buried by flour. (I have well over a dozen types of tea in the cupboard.)

Cinnamon might be an improvement over tea. As to the internal texture, lowering the temperature and increasing the bake time might help.

[kimbob]

Thanks, Mike. I don't like tea at all but will on occasion (when I have a sore throat or a cold) drink herbal tea. I used tangerine orange zinger. I ended up adapting my buttermilk bundt cake recipe with vanilla and almond extracts. Just baked 2 batches and they are good! I only filled the molds half instead of 3/4 because I used baking powder and soda. Going to put a clear glaze on. I'm happy now. Thanks for your suggestion. I just went a totally different way with the ingredients.

[BakerAunt]

Kimbob--Cass just called me about the failed recipe that you posted above. He agrees that it is a poor recipe that you may just want to throw away. However, he also gave me the following information to pass on to you and the others at Nebraska Kitchen as to why it failed.

1. It is a high ratio recipe. The weight of the sugar and honey exceed the weight of the flour. Reducing the sugar and the honey to below the weight of the flour would help.

2. The recipe needs an emulsifier. Cass says is short one egg. and adding it will help with the gumminess. He says that professional kitchens buy giant pails of emulsifier. We home cooks do not do that.

3. It needs 1/2 tsp. baking soda. (That is baking soda, not baking powder, because of the acidity from the tea.)

All that being said, Cass considers it a terrible recipe and would not blame you for just throwing it away.

[kimbob]

Thank you so much, BakerAunt and Cass! I love knowing the problems. Shame on nordicware! I definitely will not use that recipe again. I hate when recipes fail after all the work and ingredients wasted. I'll just keep using my pound cake recipe.
Thanks again for the effort into the explanation.

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