Recipe: Chai Cupcakes

Hello Cake Fans!

Here is recipe number two of the Crumbs Couture Cake Class! 

Chai, which means Indian tea, has been an institution in Indian families for generations. The traditional way of making spiced chai involves a lengthy brewing process, meaning it can take approx 20 minutes to make tea the traditional way. Sadly this means that it has become more of a "treat" for most people these days! Chai contains some fantastic spices, including Ginger, Cardamom and Cinammon.

Recipe: 

In a saucepan, boil 100ml of milk. Add 2 strong teabags (Assam or Ceylon), with 5 crushed cardamom pods, a teaspoon of cinnamon, a teaspoon of ground nutmeg, a teaspoon of ground ginger powder (or a 1cm cube of fresh ginger). Allow this to simmer for 20 mins, letting the spices infuse. After 20 minutes, remove the tea-bags and strain the milk, leaving it to cool to room temperature. Alternatively you can simply combine milk with 2 chai teabags, which are teabags which you can buy which already contain the required spices. 

In a mixer combine 250g of butter with 250g of caster sugar. Once this is fluffy, add 4 eggs in total, one by one. At this point add HALF of the spicy milk to your mixture, and blend well. Add 250g of self raising flour, and once this has all mixed well, spoon into cupcake cases and bake at 180 degrees c for 18 minutes. Once they are firm but springy to the touch, remove from the oven and allow to cool. 

In a bowl combine 250g of butter with 500g of icing sugar and once this has mixed well and become fluffy, add the remaining half of the spicy milk. blend for 3 minutes and then either spoon on to the cooled sponges or pipe on with a nozzle and piping bag. Finish off with a sprinkle of cinnamon powder.