Wednesday, 9 November 2011

chai cake

There was another birthday at work the other day, two in fact, so one of the girls offered to buy a cake and I offered to make one too. As one cake was being purchased I knew it would be a standard flavour and guaranteed to be yummy and edible, so I felt I could be a bit more adventurous in my choice of cake. I was originally planning on a spiced apple cake (ok not that adventurous) but then I stumbled upon this chai cake recipe. Chai flavoured cake? The recipe looked like it would work (ie ingredients looked like they were in the right proportion and the method didn't look too out there) so I decided to give it a go. Having said that, I didn't fully trust the method, so I modified it a bit, which you will see below. I also opted for maple icing (from this recipe) instead of the honey icing as it looked ridiculously sweet - not a problem for my sweet tooth, but probably a bit too much for normal people. The result was a deliciously fluffy spicy chai-y cake.

Verdict: Yum! A winner!
Score: 10/10

Chai Cake

I halved the recipe, but I don't think you'd end up with too much cake if you made the whole amount

Ingredients
* 2/3 cups milk
* 4 chai tea bags
* 2 whole eggs
* 1 egg yolk
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1 3/8 cups all purpose flour
* 1 cup sugar
* 2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
* 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 4 ounces unsalted butter, room temp

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Line the bottom and sides of the pans with parchment paper.

In a small saucepan bring the milk to a simmer over low med-low heat. Add the tea bags, careful not to let the paper tag fall into the milk. Remove from heat and allow the tea to steep for 5 minutes. Remove the teabags and squeeze out the milk. Let the chai milk cool completely.

In a medium bowl mix the eggs, egg yolks, vanilla, and 1/3 cup of the chai milk. Whisk together. Sift the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cardamom. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg mixture and beat until incorporated. Next alternate folding in the flour and milk (ie flour, milk, flour, milk, flour). (I did add some of the milk to the eggs but I'm not sure that this is necessary with my method - didn't seem to affect the outcome though :) I divided the batter evenly among 2 8-inch (? I think they were 8 inch - I must check...) tins, but I think this would be good for one slightly larger cake.

Bake the cakes for 26-28 minutes (longer if you're baking in one tin), or until a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Allow the cakes to cool in the tins for 10 minutes. Remove cakes from tins and peel off parchment paper. Cool completely on a wire rack.

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