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solomonara · 6 years

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“Don’t Call It Spa Night” Cake

So I’ve been reading The New Prometheus, a Jason-Todd-keeps-coming-back-to-life series by Zoeleo. Part of what makes this fic great is the detailed writing, which extends to specific mentions of different meals the characters eat over the course of the fic. And when Jason Todd shows up to spa night (sorry, ‘Self-Care Saturday’) with Earl Grey-infused cupcakes...

“Uh, the batter is an Earl Grey infusion and there’s lemon zest in the icing. They were an experiment. An homage to Alfred, kind of.”

Experimenting with baked goods? I may not be able to fanart, but I can definitely show my appreciation for a fic with experimental baked goods. Here’s what I came up with. It’s under a cut because it’s a long recipe - but not hard, I promise!

(My sincere apologies if you’re on mobile, which will both fuck with the formatting and eliminate the Keep Reading cut...)

Oh, did you notice that’s not a cupcake? I hate making cupcakes. Who the hell has time to carefully pour batter into 24 cups, decorate 24 individual tiny cakes, and then wash a fucking cupcake pan with all its little pockets of hidden stickiness... ugh, no, you get cake and you’ll like it.

Ingredients for cake:

White cake mix (It was late and I didn’t feel like measuring dry ingredients)

1/2 c butter, very soft

1 1/4 c milk (you can get away with using water, if you need to)

2 - 6 tbs Earl Grey tea (I used loose leaf, but you can use tea bags if you need to. The amount will vary depending on how much you like tea - I’ve made my recommendations in the recipe steps)

5 egg whites (or 4 whole eggs would probably be fine)

1/4 tsp vanilla

1/4 c sugar

1/4 c water

Ingredients for icing:

3 c powdered sugar

1/3 c butter, softened

3 SCANT tbs lemon juice

1/2 tsp lemon zest

^^^ me acting like I know what I’m doing. Remember kids, it’s not science unless you write it down!

Optional: cup of brewed tea, which helps cut down on swearing while you try to figure out where your egg separator went.

Steps:

I’ve written these out in more detail than you probably need - I always try to write for beginners, so I’ve put the basic instruction by the bullet point and then included more detail in the paragraphs underneath each point (to make them easily skippable if you don’t need clarification). If you have questions feel free to ask!

Prep work:

Heat 1 1/4 c milk in a small saucepan. When it’s hot, steep 1 to 3 tablespoons of tea in the milk for 3 to 5 minutes The amount of tea you use depends how much you like Earl Grey and how stale your tea is - if it’s pretty old, you might want to use more. 1 tbs will give you a very delicate, barely-there Earl Grey flavor. 3 tbs will give you... more.

Tea making advice that will serve you well in life: Steeping black teas for longer than 3 minutes doesn’t give you stronger tea. It gives you bitter tea. If you want stronger tea, add more tea leaves or another tea bag, don’t just leave your tea in the water the whole time you’re drinking it. The timing is less important when using the tea in recipes like this one, though, since the sweetness of the cake will cut the bitterness (as will brewing the tea in milk).

Strain the leaves out of the milk and set the milk aside to cool. You want it to be room temperature before adding it to the other ingredients so it doesn’t cook your eggs. Press the leaves in the strainer to squeeze out all the nice tea-ish juices.

Pro tip: Straining your tea milk into a giant Harry Potter mug will make it taste better.

Set oven to 350 (Fahrenheit, please)

Grease and flour your cake pans. I used two 9 inch rounds, but this will do fine as a 13x9 sheet cake or as cupcakes if you hate yourself for some reason.

Dump about a tablespoon of loose tea in a small food processor, spice grinder, magic bullet, or mortar and pestle. Grind it fine. You need a teaspoon of this stuff and it’s going straight into the batter so you don’t want the grain too large unless you don’t mind chewing on tea leaves.

The Cake:

Separate your eggs and add the whites to a large mixing bowl. If, like me, you suddenly realize that you don’t own an egg separator, don’t panic. Crack the egg on the side of your mixing bowl and pull apart the two halves of the shell without tipping the egg out of them. Gently transfer the yolk from one shell half to the other, letting the egg whites run out into your mixing bowl. If you get a little yolk in with your whites, don’t worry. You’re not making a meringue, so this is not a disaster. When you’re finished juggling the yolk and have most of the white extracted, dump the yolk in a separate bowl. When you’ve done all 5 eggs stick the yolks in the fridge. Intend to make custard with them later. Wake up tomorrow morning to discover you forgot to put a little water in the bowl and the yolks are now WEIRD looking and congeal-y. Throw the yolks away.

Add the butter to the egg whites and beat together.

Add the tea milk and 1/4 tsp vanilla and stir

Add your superfine ground tea and the cake mix and beat on medium speed for two minutes. Depending on the size of your mixing bowl you may want to add the dry mix gradually.

When it’s well combined, it’ll be pretty drippy:

Yum!

Pour it into your pans and bake ~25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. My pans are very dark, so my cakes tend to cook faster - you may need more time, or, if you went the cupcake route, considerably less time.

Cool the cakes for about 10 minutes before turning them out onto wire racks to cool the rest of the way.

General cake-baking tip: If you have room, sticking your cakes into the fridge or freezer for a few minutes right when they come out of the oven will keep them moist.

Syrup and Icing:

Next you’re going to make a syrup to brush on your cakes when they’re cool. I straight-up stole this idea from Liv for Cake, but we’ll need way less of it since this is a smaller cake. You’ll notice I linked you to her recipe for Earl Grey cake, which is slightly different from this one, but hey, if you hate mine now you have another option to try :)

Btw, the syrup step doesn’t really apply to cupcakes, if that’s the route you chose to go. I mean, unless you WANT to paint 24 individual little pains-in-the-ass with sticky syrup, in which case, be my guest.

So, for the syrup:

Bring 1/4 c sugar, 1/4 c water, and 1 1/2 tsp Earl Grey to a boil in a small saucepan I actually used a full tablespoon of Earl Grey here because I forgot what I was doing. Tasted fine! If you like tea.

It’s actually kind of pretty in person, I’m just bad at photos.

When the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is boiling, turn off the heat and strain the syrup to get all the crunchy tea bits out. Let it cool completely.

While your syrup and cakes are cooling, it’s a good time to make your icing! My old standby for lemon buttercream is actually just a Betty Crocker recipe that you can find right here.

In this case, though, I wanted it to be a little more delicate so as not to overwhelm the flavors in the cake. That’s accomplished easily enough - just use a little less lemon juice and make up whatever extra moisture you need in the icing with milk until it’s a nice spreadable consistency.

Also, you might want to add a touch of yellow food coloring to the icing for the look of the thing, especially if you have nothing else to decorate the cake with, because this icing basically just turns out plain white.

Assemble your cake!

When the cakes and syrup are completely cool, it’s assembly time.

Take the thicker cake round and place it on whatever surface you’re storing your cake on. Lop off the hump (unless you’ve managed to make a perfectly flat cake, in which case, what are you reading this blog for? You’re clearly a wizard and should be out profiting from that with your own wizard bakery.)

Brush that layer with your syrup. When it’s soaked in a little, cover your sins with a very thin layer of icing. This is going to be frustrating because, since you lopped off a chunk of this layer to make it level, all these crumbs are gonna wanna roll up and mess up your icing. Let ‘em. That’s why they call this a crumb layer. Get a thin, thin coating on there and then stick this layer in the fridge for a few minutes - since we’re working with buttercream here, it’ll set up nicely and make the next layer of icing go on more easily.

Add a second, thicker layer of icing, then pop the next cake layer on top. Do the same with the syrup, marvel at how much easier it is since you didn’t have to expose this layer’s innards, and then go to town with the rest of the icing.

Voila! An extremely boring-looking cake. Alas, all I had in the cupboard in the way of decoration were Christmas sprinkles, so we’re gonna say it’s minimalist and call it a day (also it was like, midnight by this point, and I was Done.)

Pair with slow-burn fic with lots of feels.

Congrats on making it to the end of this long-winded recipe. If you have any questions, feel free to hit my ask box!

#fic rec #recipe #earl grey cake #lemon buttercream #step-by-step baking #don't call it spa night cake #self care saturday cake #does this count as fanart?#experimental baking #the new prometheus #jason todd #long post #things i did instead of writing #food #about me

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