Today I’m so excited to be sharing a recipe for a tea cake! This recipe yields a fluffy, light cake that’s flavored with chamomile tea and is covered with buttercream and decorated with fresh chamomile flowers. Read on for plenty of tips for making a layer cake that uses chamomile tea in it!
I love baking with tea. Steeping tea into baked things like these chai blondies is a fun way to infuse unexpected spices into a dessert.
Tea Runners sent me a few samples of their latest blends, and their loose leaf chamomile tea really spoke to me. I decided to challenge myself to another tea-infused dessert in partnership with Tea Runners.
Tea Runners is a monthly subscription for tea - a sort of tea club if you will. Their monthly boxes includes four loose leaf teas with tasting notes and steeping instructions. Tea Runners delivers top quality teas from small batch producers, many of which are top place finishers at the Global Tea Championship Awards. A cool idea, and you can do so many things with tea besides just steeping it!
how to make a cake with chamomile tea in it
it's not hard to infuse chamomile tea into your baking.
First, get ready to bake! Pre-heat the oven to 350F, measure out your dry ingredients and wet ingredients. Boil 1.5 cups of water and steep 16 tea bags or a ½ cup of loose-leaf chamomile tea for 5 minutes, then strain and let cool, and separate out 1 cup of tea for the cake and the remaining ¼ cup for the frosting. Spray the cake pans with cake slip.
Then make the cake batter. In a KitchenAid mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, whip egg whites until they are halfway to soft peaks. Then, switch to a paddle attachment, and add in the sugar, oil, butter, eggs and mix to combine. Then add in the dry ingredients + tea alternating in thirds. Pour into prepared pans and bake for 30-40 minutes. let cool completely.
Next, while the cake is baking, make the frosting. In a KitchenAid fitted with a paddle attachment, whip the butter until smooth, then add the powdered sugar in thirds. add in vanilla and a pinch of salt and mix to combine. if it needs thinning, use a little bit of the cooled tea to thin it out - no more than a few tablespoons should be needed.
Last, frost + decorate. We're just doing a crumb coat, so stack each cake layer and spread first 2 tablespoons or so in between each layer. When all three layers have frosting in between, using an offset spatula apply a few blobs of frosting to the sides of the cake, spread around evenly, so it ends up being a moderately thin amount of frosting on the sides. Turn the offset spatula perpendicular to the cake and scrape off the excess frosting. Top with fresh chamomile flowers and serve!
voila!
Chamomile Layer Cake
Ingredients
Chamomile Tea Cake
- 6 tablespoon butter room temperature
- ⅔ cup canola oil
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 ⅔ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup chamomile tea
- 6 oz egg whites
Frosting
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 2 butter room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon of kosher salt
- as needed: a few tablespoons of chamomile tea
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 350F, measure out your dry ingredients and wet ingredients. Boil 2 cups of water and steep 16 tea bags or a ½ cup of loose-leaf chamomile tea for 5 minutes, then strain and let cool. Spray the cake pans with cake slip.
- In a KitchenAid mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, whip egg whites until they are halfway to soft peaks. Then, switch to a paddle attachment, and add in the sugar, oil, butter, eggs and mix to combine. Then add in the dry ingredients + tea alternating in thirds. Pour into prepared pans and bake for 30-40 minutes. let cool completely.
- In a KitchenAid fitted with a paddle attachment, whip the butter until smooth, then add the powdered sugar in thirds. add in vanilla and a pinch of salt and mix to combine.
- We're just doing a crumb coat, so stack each cake layer and spread first 2 tablespoons or so in between each layer. When all three layers have frosting in between, using an offset spatula apply a few blobs of frosting to the sides of the cake, spread around evenly, so it ends up being a moderately thin amount of frosting on the sides. Turn the offset spatula perpendicular to the cake and scrape off the excess frosting. Top with fresh chamomile flowers and serve!