Welcome to our Birthday Party! To celebrate our 3rd birthday I knew I had to make cake. Because what’s a birthday party without cake?! I decided on an Earl Grey Tea and French Vanilla cake. Why? Because to me, tea and books go hand in hand. There’s nothing better than sipping on a hot cup of tea while reading a good book. 

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Ingredients for cake:

  • French Vanilla Cake Mix (or use your favourite french vanilla cake recipe)
  • 2 Earl Grey tea bags
  • 1 cup of boiling water
  • 1/2 cup oil
  • 3 eggs

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Ingredients for buttercream:

  • 3/4 cup butter
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 4 cups icing sugar
  • water or milk (to make it creamy)

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Directions:

1. Boil water in your kettle. Pour 1 cup of boiling water in a mug with 2 earl grey tea bags. Let steep for approximately 1 hour.

2. Make your french vanilla cake, whether from a box mix or from scratch. If using a from scratch recipe, replace your water amount with strongly steeped earl grey tea and make your cake as usual. For a cake mix, replace the 1 cup of water with 1 cup of tea and then add in the oil and eggs to the dry cake mix. Beat with a hand mixer for 2 minutes.

3. Pour mixture into two greased 9″ pans. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 minutes (or until golden brown).

4. Let cakes cool completely.

5. Make your buttercream! I wrote in the amounts I used above for my buttercream but it will always change. Buttercream is affected by how warm your home is, how much humidity is in the air, and how long you mix it. So don’t be afraid to make adjustments to how much icing sugar you use, or how much water or milk you add to make it creamy. At this point I also used my stand-up mixer.

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6. My cakes came out with a slightly curved top so I trimmed the tops to make them flat. I then added buttercream to the top side of the bottom piece. I used a piping bag to make sure I got the frosting right to the edge. Then using a knife, I spread it all out evenly.

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7. Add your top cake layer and press down slightly to make sure it won’t move around. Using your piping bag again, fill in more frosting in between the two layers of cake, along the outside edge. I put quite a bit around this ring to make sure I filled in all the gaps. With my knife, I then spread a bit more frosting around the edge, while also smoothing out the extra frosting spilling out of the layers.

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8. I went with a ‘naked cake’ look so I was ok with the cake layers showing through. I then plopped the rest of my buttercream on the top of the cake and smoothed it out. I used a Wilton icing texture tool along the top and finished it off with sprinkles around the edge.

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Now it’s ready to eat!

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I thoroughly enjoyed this cake. You can really taste the earl grey in the cake and the vanilla balances it out perfectly. If you make a cake to celebrate this weekend, tag it with #igglenoms to share with your fellow iggles!

If you want to make a cake with some of the IGGPPC staff, there will be a bake-along Thursday, March 17th at 7 PM CST. You can follow along with them on our YouTube channel and see the list of ingredients that will be needed here. 

For more birthday goodness you can check out the schedule here and follow along on social media with #IGGPPCturns3