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.