Fluffy Earl Grey Cupcakes

These Earl Grey Cupcakes are light, fluffy, and delicious. The batter is infused with steeped earl grey and is topped with an earl grey buttercream with specks of tea leaves.

For the longest time, I really disliked Earl Grey. It had this strange soapy taste and I avoided any sweets with it. Several years ago, I tried a popular local ice cream shop that sold earl grey ice cream. I fell in love with their earl grey. That was definitely the gateway drug to my addiction to earl grey aha! Now I am obsessed with making earl grey sweets in any form. This is why I had to make earl grey cupcakes! They’re light and are flavourful, but not overpowering.

Which Earl Grey Do I Use?

Choosing which earl grey to use is super important. I had been looking for an affordable and quality earl grey tea leaf for a long time. The problem with earl grey tea is that some of them taste like soap. Some of them have good flavour but you need a lot of tea bags to get that flavour. I tried most of the ones at the grocery store and I have finally found one that I always stick to.

Stash Double Bergamot Earl Grey – It’s affordable, and easily accessible too! I can find this tea bag at most of my grocery stores and if not I can order it off amazon. I really like this tea because it smells fragrant, has good flavour, and most of the time I only need 1-2 tea bags per recipe. Also the tea leaves are quite fine so I can directly add it into a recipe without food processing it.

How to Use Tea Bags in Baking

There are a few ways to use tea bags in any baking recipe. Using it depends on the actual recipe itself and how much flavour you want. However, I almost always use these two ways when baking with tea leaves.

1. Using the dry leaves: This is my go-to method 90% of the time. I rip open the tea bag and use the tea leaves. In this earl grey cupcake recipe, I add 1 tsp of dry earl grey tea leaves into the buttercream itself. The tea is fine enough so you don’t get a gritty texture. If you’re using larger tea leaves, I recommend food processing them to avoid chunks of leaves in your baking. I find this adds so much flavour and it is pretty much handy in all cases. I also add dry tea leaves into my macaron shells!
   
2. Steeping: The second way I use tea bags is by steeping them. Instead of steeping them in the bag, I rip open the bag and steep the leaves by themselves. I always strain the leaves, but because some leaves are finer than others, I end up getting some in my final product. I actually love this because it adds that roasted earl grey flavour and that little bit of tea leaves adds that visual impact as well.

I use both methods for these earl grey cupcakes. I steep the tea leaves in the milk and then use dry leaves for the buttercream. Oftentimes, I will also use the leftover steeped leaves. Otherwise, after straining, you can just compost the remaining leaves. Don’t forget to throw away the tag in the garbage as it’s not compostable!

A good way to store the dry tea leaves is by ripping a few bags and storing the leaves in an airtight container. This makes it much easier to measure and often leads to less mess!

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Feel like spicing these cupcakes up? Make Neapolitan buttercream and add flavours like chocolate, strawberry or vanilla to the earl grey! Neapolitan Cupcakes can be found on my blog here.