Have you ever seen the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel? There is an interesting character called Evelyn, who tries to get a job at a phone service company. I love how she describes, in detail, the art of dunking your biscuit in your tea: soak the biscuit in the tea, calculate the exact moment before it dissolves, then whip it up into your month and enjoy the blissful union of biscuit and tea combined. Because of this, she gets a newly created job by the manager: Cultural Advisor. 🙂 I love how people enjoy the simple joy brought by food.

So I made my own teatime dessert – a simple apple corn bread. Compared to the traditional bread which is made with yeast, this “bread” is closer to cake. However, it’s not that type of cake you bake for special occasions, but a “quick bread” type of cake that you bake for teatime, afternoon snack or breakfast. Unlike traditional corn bread, which tends to be a bit crumbly, I use syrup and apple juice to give it a fruity fragrance and extra moisture. This results in a perfect teatime cake with a brownie-like texture, which I happily enjoy with a glass of golden apple juice - well, I know, not a real "tea", but tea would go well with it too, especially those fruity ones. 😉

Kitchen Gadgets: Oven

Serves: 12-16

Ingredients

• 2 cups cornmeal
• 2 cups wholewheat pastry flour
• ½ tsp sea salt
• 2 tbsp baking powder
• ½ cup soymilk
• ½ cup canola oil
• ¼ cup brown rice syrup
• ¼ cup agave nectar
• 1½ cup apple juice
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 175°C (350°F), grease a 9×13 inch (23×33 cm) baking pan.
2. Combine and sift all dry ingredients, stir to mix well.
3. In a large mixing bowl, beat soy milk, canola oil, rice syrup, agave nectar, apple juice and vanilla extract until they are dissolved.
4. Add the wet mixture gradually into the dry one and use a whisk first to lightly mix the batter, never beat it. Then switch to a silicon spatula and use a folding method to mix well.
5. Pour the batter into the greased baking pan. Bake for 30 minutes. When a toothpick, inserted into the centre of the bread, comes out clean, it’s ready.