Recipe This | Air Fryer Tea Loaf (2024)

Make your favourite old fashioned tea loaf in the air fryer with this simple easy to prep recipe. The air fryer does a brilliant job of perfectly air frying tea bread and then serve sliced tea loaf warm with some butter for the ultimate afternoon treat.

Tea bread is something that my Grandma would make with leftovers from baking and what’s brilliant about it, is that you are likely to have all ingredients in already.

Tea Loaf

I often get asked where my biggest inspiration is, when it comes to choosing recipes that we feature on Recipe This.

Number 1 will always be recipes that I love that I want to convert to kitchen gadgets. It might even be a recipe from childhood that is just so much easier with a gadget.

Number 2 will be requests from our readers of what recipes that they would like to see converted.

Number 3 is inspired by eating out and places that we visit. We visit Mexico soon so I am sure there will be some latin recipes heading over to Recipe This!

Last summer we visited The Beamish Museum somewhere I have not visited in many, many years. It’s a beautiful place with a lot of old fashioned scenery. The kids had a wonderful day, though I loved the old school bakery the most and got excited as I queued for a few treats.

One of the things I bought was a delicious tea loaf. So good and unfortunate that I had to share it with Jorge, a raisin loving kid.

After looking at the size of the tea loaf, me and Jorge both agreed that we must make it in the air fryer on our return home.

So here we are today, with a tea loaf cooked just like grandma used to make, inspired by our trip to the Beamish.

What Is A Tea Loaf?

A tea loaf is a fruit loaf made with a leftover cup of tea. It has similar ingredients to a tea cake, and when sliced it reminds me of our air fryer banana bread.

But of course, instead of bananas it is made with lots of raisins. My grandma would often make a tea loaf with leftovers from making rock cakes as it was similar ingredients.

You might also call a tea loaf, tea bread or a tea cake.

Why Is It Called A Tea Loaf?

It is called a tea loaf because it’s a tea soaked fruit cake.

Then the batter is cooked in a bread loaf pan, so that it looks like a loaf rather than a cake.

Just like you could make our air fryer Christmas cake and then shape it into a fruit loaf like with this tea loaf.

Is A Tea Loaf Brack?

I notice that my old fashioned cookery books don’t call it tea loaf, instead moist tea loaf is referred to as brack.

Brack is the old fashioned tea loaf in Ireland. And is traditional for serving at Halloween.

Can You Air Fry A Tea Loaf?

Yes, you can air fry a tea loaf. And you will love how delicious this tea loaf recipe is when cooked in the air fryer.

For making tea bread we have two mini silicone loaf pans and the two of them sit side by side in our air fryer basket. Making it perfect for making a full batch of tea bread in the air fryer.

This is the mini silicone loaf pans that we used in this tea bread recipe.

Should You Use Yorkshire Tea In Your Tea Loaf?

A classic recipe for a tea loaf, will tell you its from Yorkshire (we live in Yorkshire) and that a Yorkshire tea loaf recipe MUST be made with Yorkshire tea.

Personally, I just go with what ingredients that I have in. So, I used whatever tea bags I had in our tea jar.

But of course, if you want to make a true tea loaf recipe then we recommend a Yorkshire tea bag!

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Tea Bread Recipe Ingredients

Fruit – There are plenty of your favourite dried fruit in a traditional tea bread. You can use raisins, currants, sultanas, or a mixture of those. We have also added in some mixed peel to it for extra flavour.

Tea – Then of course, tea bread translates as tea soaked bread, so of course leftover tea is included. You can use leftovers from your own cup of tea, or purposely make a cup of tea and then soak the raisins in it. You can also use any tea don’t feel like you need to go out and buy Yorkshire tea for your tea loaf.

Sugar – Then along with the tea, we recommend soaking the dried fruit in some light brown sugar. This will help bring the sweetness alive and create a delicious tasting tea loaf. The process reminds me of when you make an instant pot sticky toffee pudding.

Egg – You will also need to add an egg to help everything come together. We only needed one and that was enough for both the mini loaves.

Flour – Then the flour works as the binding agent and brings the mixture together. Which is like a thick cake batter.

Then for the kitchen gadgets that we have used in this recipe for tea loaf it has been our Philips Air Fryer. We recommend this one and its wonderful for many types of air fryer recipes.

Plus, we recommend you head over to our air fryer recipes category as we have more than 500 tried and tested air fryer recipes and have been air frying for 10 years.

How To Make This Fruit Tea Loaf?

• Load. Start by loading the dried fruit into a bowl with sugar and leftover tea. For best results leave overnight soaking in the fridge to add to the flavour.
• Mix. The next day mix in an egg and mix with flour until you have a cake like batter.
• Cook. Then spoon into two silicone mini cake loaf tins, spreading the mixture between the two. Then place into the air fryer your uncooked fruit tea loaf and air fry for 15 minutes at 180c/360f, followed by another 20 minutes at 160c/320f for 20 minutes or until a thermometer comes out clean.
• Serve. Then slice and serve with butter. Or it tastes even better with some Wensleydale.

And I am sure you can see now how easy it is to make fruit loaf with tea.

Can I Freeze Tea Loaf?

Yes, you sure can freeze tea loaf, and you can slice it up and freeze it in Ziploc bags and it makes brilliant already prepared food for your next summer picnic. Or if you just cook for one, it’s a great supply for when you just want to grab one slice from the freezer.

Listen To Air Fryer Tea Loaf

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More Air Fryer Old Fashioned Recipes

• Air Fryer Cheese Flan
• Air Fryer Rock Cakes
• Air Fryer Fat Rascals
• Air Fryer Victoria Sandwich

Your fruit loaf bread recipe is below, note you can print it out with or without photos, adjust servings, or click between metric and imperial depending on where you are in the world.

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