Cakes

Tres leches cakes are so yummy. So is Thai tea, so why not both! And also, why not layered! (well, it’s annoying, so that’s why not..but I tried anyways).

Recipe is adapted from Allrecipes Tres Leches cake. Looks long but it’s pretty straightforward.

1. Thai Tea Cake:

• 190g flour
• 5 g baking powder
• 112 g butter (stick), room temp
• 200 g granulated sugar
• 5 eggs
• 3 g vanilla extract
• 20 g Thai tea mix, ground up

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease your pans.
2. Sift flour, baking powder, and ground up Thai tea mix.
3. Cream butter and sugar. Once incporated, add in vanilla extact and eggs.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, a little at a time.
5. Distribute evenly to multiple pans (I think I did ~180g across 4 pans).
6. Bake for 20-25 min until a toothpick comes out cleanly.
7. Remove cakes onto a large baking tray. They’l probably shrink a bit and should come out easily due to greasing.

2. Thai Tea Milk Mixture:

Here’s the recipe, which is a variant of my other crepe cakes recipes.

1. Passion Fruit Crepes: [25-30 8in crepes] 

• 650 g milk, at least room temperature!
• 240 g flour
• 10 g passion fruit puree (I buy frozen puree from Mexican supermarkets and reduce down)
• 90 g sugar
• 4 eggs
• 50 g butter, melted 

1. If milk isn’t at room temperature, put into a medium saucepan and heat briefly.
2. Sift flour into a large bowl.
3. Add sugar and whisk briefly.
4. Add in eggs and mix. The batter is a bit thick at this point.
   • If you want to reduce the yellowness of the eggs, you can first mix the egg yolks separately with the sugar, then add that + egg whites to the flour.
5. Now add the milk to the batter, slowly at a time. Once about half the milk is added, take time to mix thoroughly. Add the rest of the milk and mix.
6. Add the seedless passion fruit puree (sieve it) and mix. I only wanted the slightest bit of passion fruit here since I knew it may mess up the consistency. The flavor will mostly come from the diplomat cream.
7. Add melted butter and mix fully.
8. Pour mixture through a sieve. The batter will be a runny consistency. Cling wrap and throw into fridge for at least 30 minutes. Longer is better.
9. Use two pans or more (you’ll thank me later). You want to make sure your pan is always greased before adding batter. For my greaser, I use a spatula wrapped in a napkin that’s taped on top and dip it into melted butter. On low heat, allow pan to warm up, grease, and add some butter and add a small amount of batter. I use a 1/3 cup scooper and fill it 2/3 of the way up (so 2/9 cup). It takes some trial and error to figure out the right amount to cover your pan. Between crepes, I take the pan off an place it only a wet kitchen towel, so that when I add the crepe batter, it’s able to spread a bit before cooking.
10. When the edges of the crepe become dry (a minute or so), flip over and cook for a short while longer (<1 minute).
11. Repeat.
12. To get a consistent size, place a bowl or something circular over the crepe and cut off excess scraps.
13. Let crepes cool completely before assembling. 

2. Passion Fruit Diplomat Cream:

I first made these by accident, but loved how they turned out. Quite interesting texture and yummy (albeit, a bit sweet). They’re just lava cake batter, baked all the way through!

1. Thai Tea white chocolate base:

• 69 g white chocolate
• 20 g butter
• 40 g sugar
• 1 egg
• 25 g flour
• *35 g Thai tea
  • 75 g water
  • 15 g Thai tea mix

2. Ube white chocolate base:

For the last year or so, I’ve seen so many ube flan cakes online. I knew I wanted to try it at some point and decided I’d instead make a matcha cake version! I adapted the recipe from Sweet Ambition’s youtube video on ube flan cakes. Her recipe was for a 9 inch cake, so I divided it by 2 for a 6 inch cake.

1. Caramel:

• 100 g granulated sugar

1. Preheat oven to 320F.
2. Put sugar into a small saucepan and heat on high until sugar dissolves and a caramel forms. You can use one less pot and make the caramel diretly in the cake pan.
3. If you make in a saucepan, pour into your cake and set aside.

2. Flan: [makes a little more than what’s needed for the 6 in cake layer]

Started off trying to use a crepe maker that I borrowed from a friend. I thought it’d expidite the process. NOPE. At least not that particular one..it only caused me to waste batter since the griddle was too hot, so I switched over to a frying pan. My batter requires the temp to be around 250F, low heat. Overall, I was pretty pleased with it, but making this reminded me why I hate making them. lol. They take forever!

I recently saw some adorable little chiffon cake pans and bought a few. I knew the center would be the perfect vessle for a type of filling. Decided on a mousse. For this particular one, I set it a bit too much for my liking, but was still really happy with the flavor. The mousse is super liquidy when you first prepare it. But after a short while in the fridge/ freezer, it firms up nicely. It becomes a great texture after being in the fridge overnight. But yeah, this mousse was great and I’ll definitely use this recipe again. The mousse recipe was from The Spruce and the chiffon cake was adapated from Just One Cookbook.

Butterfly pea flowers fascinate me. The tea is pH sensitive and produces an awesome blue to pink gradient. I’ve been thinking of how to apply to a dessert and decided to try a mille crepe cake. I’ve made a few different crepe cakes, but despite this, it always takes a gazillion years. Definitely worth at least one try though :D. This recipe should provide enough batter and diplomat cream for up to ~25-30 crepe layers.

I recently bought some activated charcoal since I saw so many places on IG using it! And then I saw a roll cake with matcha filling and knew I should try doing that! The filling was not stable enough to support the cake, so the cake sort of broke :(. I think actually rolling the cake like swirl may have been a better option. I also made a charcoal sablé and tried to incorporate it, but it really didn’t add much. That recipe was equal parts butter, granulated sugar, and almond flour with a tiny bit of charcoal heated in the oven until baked.

I’ve been really loving Thai tea and black sesame. I’ve also been wanting to try making a buttercream, so made this Thai tea black sesame cake :D. This cake had 5 components. The actual cake (based off Vickii Ma’s ), vanilla/ black sesame buttercream, macarons (shells + buttercream or ganache filling), Thai tea white chocolate drip, and white chocolate shards.

1. Cake [makes four 1.5ish inch tall 6-inch cake layers]

Matcha and ube are life, so combining them only seemed natural :D. This cake had 6 components. The actual cake, whipped cream frosting/filling, macarons (shells + lazy custard/ ganache filling), white chocolate drip, and the sail.

1. Sponge [makes three 200g 6-inch cake layers]

• 112g cake flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 5 large eggs, separated
• 156 g granulated sugar
• 8 g matcha powder
• 60 g whole milk

1. Oven at 400F. Line baking pan with parchment paper on bottom and grease the sides of the pan if you don’t have nonstick.
2. Whisk together sifted flour, matcha, baking powder, and salt.
3. In a different, large bowl, whisk egg yolks, sugar, and milk until pale.
4. Separately, whisk egg whites until medium stiff peaks.
5. Add dry mixture to wet mixture and fold together. Then slowly fold in the medium stiff egg whites. I usually add 1/3 of the meringue first to make the batter light, then fold in the remaining egg whites.
6. Pour batter onto the baking sheet and then rap the sheet down a few times to release any big air bubbles.
7. Bake for 25 minutes (maybe a bit less) ([a toothpick should go in and out cleanly].
8. Bang the cake down and then flip over onto somewhere to cool. The cake should have receded from the edges so it should plop right out. Remove parchment paper and then once it cools enough to hold it’s own, wrap in plastic wrap and fast cool in the fridge.

2. (Ube) Stabilized Whipped Cream Frosting: