Blackberry Hazelnut Tea Cakes Recipe

What are tea cakes? Are they a cake, a cookie, or something else entirely? In England, tea cakes can refer to sweet buns or rolls made with dried fruit, while in Scotland, the name is applied to a type of chocolate-dipped cookie with a marshmallow topping similar to the s'mores-like Mallomar. Chinese tea cakes, on the other hand, may take the form of spongy, steamed sweet potato patties, while classic southern U.S. ones are essentially soft, puffy cookies. Recipe developer Alexander Roberts' blackberry hazelnut tea cakes are more like mini cupcakes, though, as they start with a soft batter rather than a stiff dough.

Roberts' tea cakes are delicately flavored with ground hazelnuts and lemon zest, then topped with a blackberry glaze. An additional berry on top contrasts beautifully with the pinkish-purple frosting, making for sweet two-bite morsels. While these tea cakes are almost too pretty to eat, "almost" is the operative word here, since they're too tempting not to take a nibble.

For the hazelnut tea cakes, you'll need hazelnut meal, all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, lemon zest, eggs, and butter. The glaze is made from lemon juice, powdered sugar, and  blackberries — while you could use frozen berries if you need to, fresh ones are necessary to top off the tea cakes.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Grease a 12-cup muffin tray with cooking spray and set aside.

Add white sugar, lemon zest, and eggs to a mixing bowl. Whisk with a hand mixer until combined.

Whisk in the melted butter.

Add the hazelnut meal, all purpose flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold with a spatula until no dry streaks remain.

Divide the batter evenly between the muffin cups.

Bake tea cakes for 17-20 minutes, or until golden brown. Allow to cool

Meanwhile, slice 6 blackberries in half and set aside.

To make the glaze, add ¼ cup blackberries to a medium-sized bowl. Mash with a fork.

Add the powdered sugar and lemon juice to the mashed blackberries and mix until a glaze forms.

Invert the cakes and cover them with a spoonful of blackberry glaze.

Top each cake with a halved blackberry and serve.

Commercially-produced hazelnut meal or flour (the terms can be used interchangeably) is available for purchase, but it doesn't seem to be as widely available as almond meal and as a result may be pretty pricey. It's easy enough to DIY, though, and homemade hazelnut meal is perfectly okay to use in this recipe.

To make hazelnut meal, you'll need to use toasted nuts, not raw ones. If the latter's what you've got on hand, though, toast the hazelnuts by baking them at 350 F for 10 to 15 minutes. Once that's done, wrap the nuts in a towel and lightly rub them together to remove the skins. All that's left to do is to grind them in a food processor for about 30 seconds until they resemble coarse meal. Don't grind them too long, though, or you may instead wind up with hazelnut paste — also tasty, but not recommended for use in these tea cakes. In order to make enough meal for this recipe, you'll need about ⅔ cup hazelnuts.

While you can enjoy these tea cakes as a breakfast or snack alongside a cup of tea or coffee, they're so pretty that you may want to plan a full-blown tea party to showcase them. Sure, you could go with a British motif complete with strong, sweet Builders tea, classic English scones, cucumber sandwiches, and sausage rolls, but these tea cakes would also go well with classic southern fare like sweet tea and pimento cheese.

Another pairing idea for these blackberry hazelnut tea cakes is something that echoes one of the primary flavors, such as buttermilk blackberry scones and blackberry buttermilk bundt cake or hazelnut financiers, hazelnut shortbread, or a buckwheat chocolate hazelnut tart. It could also be fun to serve these tea cakes with tea-flavored foods like lemon-glazed Earl Grey cookies and Earl Grey lemon scones or even with a completely different kind of tea cake: Russian tea cakes, which are also known as Mexican wedding cookies.