Recent birthday cakes

Just a quick post on a couple of birthday cakes I whipped up last week.

The first was a little vanilla sponge cake for my aunty's birthday on Saturday. My mum bought me two 6 inch round tins a couple of weeks ago and they make a very cute cake. So cute that I made a vanilla chai tea latte cake the same size for my sister in law's birthday on Sunday. As I didn't alter the quantities I ended up with enough left over batter to bake a tray of buns/fairy cakes too.

To cover up my scruffy edges I piped shell shapes back and forth around the top and bottom of the cake using a wilton 1M nozzle. Here's a useful video tutorial by Sweetapolita if you fancy giving it a shot. I also recommend heavy quantities of sprinkles. They cover all manner of uneven icing!

As I baked these cakes quickly I didn't really have enough time to do a proper crumb coat or level the sponges properly on either cakes, so there were some crumbs running through the icing. To be honest it didn't spoil the overall effect; both cakes still looked pretty.

Apologies for the slightly fuzzy images. I photographed these cakes in such a hurry that I'm not entirely convinced I had my camera on the correct settings.

6 inch vanilla sponge cake

I followed the standard recipe of equal quantities self-raising flour, golden caster sugar, margarine and eggs. For two 6 inch cakes I used the weight of 2 large eggs, about 150g

Preheat your oven to 180C/Gas 4. Beat your sugar and margarine together until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add your eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add a tablespoon of your flour with the last egg to stop the mixture from splitting. Add the rest of your flour, along with a tablespoon or so of milk and 1/4 teaspoon of good quality vanilla extract (or to taste). Mix together until everything is just incorporated. Divide the mixture between two tins and bake in the centre of the oven for roughly 25 minutes, or until golden and springy to touch. Leave to cool in the tins for 5 minutes before turning out to finish cooling on a wire rack.

Once cool sandwich together with jam and vanilla butter icing. I followed the Hummingbird Bakery's vanilla frosting, making 1 1/2 batches.

Vanilla chai tea latte cake

I had a chai-normous amount of fun baking this cake. (HA! See what I did there?)

Awful puns aside, I was really pleased with this cake. I immediately knew what I wanted to bake when I saw instant vanilla chai in my bundle of goodies from Whittards: a fluffy, spiced, brown sugar sponge with a sweet, vanilla cream cheese butter icing. The homemade stencil decoration was a last minute addition to cover up my slightly lumpy icing (perhaps my butter was too cold?) and I think it looks fun although I may have been a tad overzealous with my cinnamon dusting as it caught the back of my throat a little when eating the cake!

 
I wasn't sure how much the vanilla chai flavour would come through (I baked this while my biscuit dough was in the fridge) but it worked really well. I thought there was a good balance between warm, cinnamony spices and vanilla sweetness.


It actually took a couple of weeks to get round to baking as I was enjoying just drinking the vanilla chai, but I'm glad I eventually did. I'm definitely making this cake again providing I don't drink all the chai first.

For a bit of fun I put a different flavour of instant chai in each cup for myself, my brother and mum to try. Out of the three we all liked the vanilla chai the most. I liked its sweeter edge over the spiced chai (I do have a raging sweet tooth after all) although the spiced chai was more refreshing and, well, spiced (you can tell I'm going to be inundated with product reviews with descriptions like that.) The chocolate chai was lovely too and makes a nice alternative to hot chocolate if you want something comforting but not as sickly sweet.

Hope you're all enjoying my tea series! I'll be back with my final tea themed bake on Sunday.

Vanilla chai tea latte cake
Own recipe 

Sponges:
200g (7oz) soft light brown sugar
200g (7oz) margarine
3 large (7oz) eggs
170g (6oz) self-raising flour
30g (1oz) instant vanilla chai
2 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Cream cheese butter icing:
300g icing sugar
50g softened butter
175g cream cheese
a few drops of vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line two 20cm round cake tins. Beat together the sugar and margarine until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating between each addition, and add a tablespoon of the flour with the last egg to stop the mixture from curdling. Add the flour, chai, milk, cinnamon and vanilla and mix everything together until just fully incorporated. Divide the batter between the two tins and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for approx. 25 minutes until risen, golden and springy to touch. Leave to cool in the tins for around 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

For the icing just beat everything together for a few minutes until light and fluffy and use to fill and top the cake. For some reason the butter stayed a bit lumpy with me but wasn't too visually horrifying and still tasted fine. Finish with a dusting of cinnamon.

Disclaimer: I was sent tea products to bake with as Whittards recognised that I'm a cake/biscuit obsessed crazy tea lady. They're a brand I enjoy and have purchased from before. I was not paid for this post and all opinions expressed are my own.

Chai latte biscuits

I love chai tea, or "ninja tea" as it's referred to in my family as mum once asked if I was going to order a tai chi latte in a cafe. We like our tea martial arts style.

 

Sadly I do not own any ninja shaped biscuits cutters, however I do have a cute teapot shaped cutter which I've had for about 3 years but never used. Perfect for tea flavoured biscuits!

 

I was a bit late jumping on the chai tea band wagon, only discovering it last year, so when Whittards offered me some flavours from their instant chai tea range to bake with I was more than a little bit excited.

 

For the biscuits I altered a Peggy Porschen biscuit recipe, adding chocolate chai to one half of the dough and the spiced chai to the other. I piped melted chocolate on to the chocolate chai batch to enhance the chocolate flavour which I felt was a nice touch visually and flavour wise. Both batches were subtley spiced and crispy and had a lovely, creamy after taste; surprisingly moreish and perfect for dipping in a milky drink, although I photographed mine with an ordinary chai tea to keep the chai theme going.

 

My only complaint is that a few of the biscuits were a bit tough/chewy as I must have overhandled the dough when rerolling but other than that I was very happy with them.

 

I think the instant chai worked really well in the biscuits. Now I'm debating whether I should try adding some of my flavoured hot chocolates to my baking.

Stay tuned for some more tea themed bakes! I'm going to have a bit of a tea series and will post my next bake within the next few days.

 

Chocolate chai and spiced chai latte biscuits

Recipe altered from Peggy Porschen's chocolate teaspoon biscuits in Boutique Baking.

200g unsalted butter

100g caster sugar

100g soft light brown sugar

pinch of salt

1 egg

175g plain flour and 25g instant chocolate chai

175g plain flour and 25g instant spiced chai

Line a couple of baking trays with greaseproof paper. Beat together the butter, salt and sugars until smooth. Beat the egg in another bowl and slowly add to the butter mixture until fully incorporated. Divide the mixture between two bowls and add the flour and chocolate chai powder to one half and flour and spiced chai powder to the other. Mix until the doughs just come together, gather into balls and wrap them separately in cling film. Chill for 30 minutes.

Place the dough on a floured surface and knead briefly. Roll the dough 3-4mm thick and cut out shapes using a cutter. (I used different cutters for each batch so I wouldn't get confused between flavours.) Place the biscuits onto the prepared trays and chill again for another 30 minutes. Meanwhile preheat your oven to 175C/Gas 3.

Bake for 6 minutes or until the biscuits spring back to touch (mine took about 10 minutes). Once baked, leave them on their trays to cool for about 30 minutes. Decorate with piped icing or melted chocolate once fully cool although they work absolutely fine as plain biscuits too.

Disclaimer: I was sent tea products to bake with as Whittards recognised that I'm a cake/biscuit obsessed crazy tea lady. They're a brand I enjoy and have purchased from before. I was not paid for this post and all opinions expressed are my own.