Chai Latte Butter Cake

I have been doing lots of reading and what I find fascinating is the more reading you do about baking the more you realise it is absolutely all about science. And once you get your head around the basic principles you can cut loose and experiment more.

I had a girly get-together on the horizon and I decided I wanted to make a cake for grown-ups, a spice cake. I searched, but couldn't find a recipe that I liked and so decided to make a variant of the yummy butter cake I'd made for Miss J's birthday. One of my beloved 'guinea pigs', LouLou, had given me some lovely teas for my birthday, so I thought I'd use the choc chip chai one to spice things up. Some recipes I've seen use a powdered version of a chai mix, but I decided to err on the side of caution and instead infuse the tea in the milk used in the recipe - I thought that was kind of smart!

Knowing how much batter this makes, I made a half quantity and used a 20cm square tin. I layered this cake with some of the butter cream. Oh, and you can adjust the amount of chai you use to your own taste - mine was about medium spice level I think.

So, just in case you missed it... here goes with variant included:

Chai Butter Cake

Ingredients:
1 cup of butter (room temperature)
2 cups of sugar
4 eggs (room temperature)
3 cups of sifted self-raising flour
1 cup of whole milk infused with around 1 tablespoon chai
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Method:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Grease and flour 3 x 20cm/8 inch cake tins, or whatever you choose to use.

Using a mixer, cream butter until fluffy. Add sugar and continue to cream for about 7 minutes. Add eggs one at a time. Beat well after each egg is added.

Alternate adding flour and milk beginning and ending with flour. Add vanilla to mix until just mixed.

Pour batter in to tin/s. and then carefully drop the tin/s onto counter several times to ensure release of any air bubbles. This will help you have a more level cake (nice tip!).Bake for 25 - 30 minutes (depending on your oven) until done. Cool in pans for 5 - 10 minutes. Remove and immediately wrap each layer in plastic wrap to seal in moisture. Cool completely on wire racks. Once cooled, you are ready to ice /assemble your cake.

I debated about what flavour icing to use.. I think if I'd had cinnamon at the time that might have won, but in the end I decided on a coffee butter cream which is where the latte part comes in. Ultimately the coffee actually did work well with the chai spices and I would use this with it again.

Next up... (be still my heart) Lemon Meringue Cake