Pumpkin Vanilla Chai Cake

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So, this was a cake for someone else, and it had so much sugar in it I didn’t even try it. They said it was good though, so maybe like an 8? Anyway, this recipe came from Tessa Huff’s book “Layered”. It has some homemade marshmallows in the recipe that I didn’t even mess with. And, I used her cake recipe, and the cakes sunk SO bad so I had to remake it. I used the vanilla cake recipe from the strawberry shortcake I make (cookingclassy.com recipe), and then I just added the spices in after I adjusted for the amount of flour in the cakes, seriously, math. They were fine the second time. Also, I didn’t have loose chai tea, so we used a chai tea mix from Trader Joe’s, and it was fine. In terms of directions, there is nothing out of the ordinary based on how you would make any other cake, ganache, or buttercream, so please look at the other 20 cake recipes I have blogged in the past couple of years.

Vanilla Chai Cake

1 cup milk
1 tsp. cinnamon
295 grams cake flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. cardamom
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. loose chai tea
3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
4 large egg yolks




Pumpkin Ganache

12 oz. white chocolate
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
18 tsp. nutmeg
5 Tbs. pumpkin
2 1/2 T cream
1 tsp. corn syrup
1 T butter

You slowly melt these things together


Pumpkin Chai Buttercream

3/4 cup butter
2 T. chai tea
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup pumpkin
2 T. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. nutmeg

Finally, here are some takeaways I learned this time:

1. You have to carefully mix everything at the end from the bottom of the bowl so it is incorporated, otherwise, it sucks
2. Too much sugar seems to make the texture way off with my cakes. I always cut it down by 25%
3. Don’t check them until they are almost done baking or the toothpick deflates the cake.

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